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MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 



DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS 



CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS 02139 



Julv 18, 1985 



RECEIVED 



COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE 

 AND TECHNOLOGY 



Honorable Don Fuqua 



Chairman 



Committee on Science and Technology 



Suite 2321 



Rayburn House Office Building 



Washington, D.C. 20515 



Dear Congressman Fuqua: 



I thank you very much for your letter regarding my 

 testimony before the Science ^olicy "^ask Force on June 18, 

 1985. 



I will try to answer the questions that you have sent 

 to me. 



1. What are (a) the advantages and (b) the disadvantages of 

 sharing the cost of big science facilities on an inter- 

 national basis? 



I cannot answer this question in all generality. '^he advan- 

 tages or disadvantages of international cost sharing depend 

 very much on the nature of the projects and on the general 

 situation in the field at the present and in the near future. 



Let me, therefore, look at the projects planned by the 

 High Energy communities for the near future. There are two 

 large projects: One is the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) 

 in the United States and the other is the Lep Hadron Collider (LHC) 

 in Western Europe. Ther first is planned to collide two 

 proton beams up to 20 TeV, at a cost of several billion 

 dollars; the second plans to collide protons up to 8 or 

 10 TeV in the available tunnel, in which an electron beam 

 collider is inthe process of construction. Its cost is 

 probably around one billion dollars. Both communities study 

 these projects intensely. It is clear to most people in the 

 field that a realization of both projects, roughly at the 

 same time, would be a senseless waste of effort. It would 

 make sense only if the European project were an intermediate 

 stepping stone of say 5 to 6 '^eV realizable at an earlv time 

 and the U.S. project were to be postponed to a much later 

 date at the highest possible energy, even higher than 20 TeV 



