Why Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste? Big Science Funding Lessons

Funding particle accelerators is rarely easy; in fact, quite often difficulties in obtaining funding provoke an existential crises. In the hope that history understood can be the prologue for a brighter future, this talk will provide an historical analysis of funding crises. All the accelerator projects considered come from the U.S. national laboratory system, but examples are drawn from projects of various scales from different physics subfields at different times. Particularly suggestive is the comparison of the particle physics project, the Superconducting Supercollider, which had a multi-billion dollar budget before being cancelled in 1993, and the $6 million Intense Pulsed Neutron Source which was used for condensed matter physics and other material science experiments from 1981 to 2008. The talk will trace common patterns, highlight typical problems, and offer lessons for future big science planning.