The US is falling behind in terms of research. And that’s a problem.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/13149

        Joseph Hertzlinger said:

If nobody is researching X, it might make sense to try doing X just to see if it can be done (Example: the Manhattan project). If just one nation is researching X, it might make sense to follow them to prevent a monopoly. (Example: the space race).

Actually the Manhattan project is an example of the second type, not the first (Germany and Japan very much were researching it).

        Shafe said:

Boring does not eliminate your need for foundations. Miles of tunnel will likely traverse many different soil profiles, each requiring site-specific foundation design to ensure that differential movement is within whatever tolerances are necessary.

If cost is the only issue, it would be better to open-cut the entire trench and partially bury the collider. You would set the depth of the bury to displace enough dirt for use in whatever shielding you need. Nevada deserts would have the advantage of limited soil movement owing to no freeze-thaw and presumably non-expansive and well drained sandy soils.

Access to the interior of the ring would require bridges or tunnels. It would impose an impediment to surface water runoff, and that would have to be accounted for. If it’s habitat for any desert wildlife, migration routes would have to be maintained.

But the LHC is something like 500-600 ft deep. It that’s what’s required for shielding, piling a few feet of dirt on top of the ring isn’t going to do anything.

The lhc ranges in depth from about 50 meters to 200 meters. It was built in a tunnel previous used for an electron-positron collider. The reason for the depth isn’t so much shielding as it is topography and stability. The land above it varies and is not perfectly flat, so it is necessary to bore through it at a level that it remains straight and level at all areas.

One reason for going so far underground was apparently because of the area it is in. They had to go under any potential places where it could hit utilities or a subbasement or something.

If you did one in a place like the Nevada Test Site, where large areas of ground are mostly (but not perfectly) flat, you’d probably end up burring some parts of it, building others up on berms or causways and cutting others into the ground. If you started on the ground and then ran into a hill, you’d either tunnel through the hell or cut a pass through it, like is done with highways and railroads. The difference being that while highways and railroads cave some grade to them, this has to be perfectly true and straight.

If nobody is researching X, it might make sense to try doing X just to see if it can be done (Example: the Manhattan project). If just one nation is researching X, it might make sense to follow them to prevent a monopoly. (Example: the space race). If everybody is researching X, then we can buy X (if it’s applied) from a variety of sources and learn about from more sources. In the applied case, we’ll be competing with lots of subsidized industries, which is a good way to lose money. (Example: solar panels.)

If cost is the only issue, it would be better to open-cut the entire trench and partially bury the collider. You would set the depth of the bury to displace enough dirt for use in whatever shielding you need. Nevada deserts would have the advantage of limited soil movement owing to no freeze-thaw and presumably non-expansive and well drained sandy soils.

Access to the interior of the ring would require bridges or tunnels. It would impose an impediment to surface water runoff, and that would have to be accounted for. If it’s habitat for any desert wildlife, migration routes would have to be maintained.

But the LHC is something like 500-600 ft deep. It that’s what’s required for shielding, piling a few feet of dirt on top of the ring isn’t going to do anything.

Building the next big particle accelerator will happen at some point, when the Return On Investment for getting new results from the LHC starts diminishing. (And it will. Predictions are the LHC has about 20 years total useful life, including upgrades, until she no longer returns enough new data to be worth running).