The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider

超导超级对撞机（SSC）是美国的高能物理项目，始于1983年，在花费了20亿美元建造之后，于1993年被国会突然终止，为每个对科学研究感兴趣的人提供了一个独特的机会来研究“大科学”的动态。“在Lillian Hoddeson教授的指导下，这个为期四年的项目正在由一个经验丰富的多学科团队进行，旨在揭示和解释SSC起源和消亡的因素。 SSC是一个质子对撞机，比任何早期的加速器都要高出一个数量级，而且要昂贵得多，它是有史以来最雄心勃勃的粒子加速器项目。 这台前沿机器的目的是满足整个美国高能社区的愿望和愿望。" 由于其规模和成本，支持这一项目所需的联盟深入到美国的政治，工业，甚至军事社区。 Hoddeson教授和她的团队旨在研究这些联系，并研究一个主要的科学界如何创建一个大型项目并对其崩溃作出反应。 在研究SSC的终止时，该研究将考虑以前几乎无限制增长的大科学是否已经达到了一个转折点，或者可能是一个进化的死胡同，以及未来SSC规模的项目是否再次成为可能。 十多年来，这个研究小组的所有四名成员一直在研究高能物理领域，包括SSC，从不同的角度-科学，历史，档案，哲学和社会学。 其中两个机构一直在与南南合作工作人员沟通，以努力保存重要文件和集体机构记忆。 这项研究将整合这些科学学者的互补经验。 他们将进行密集的努力，研究文献，保存主要参与者的口头回忆，并准备一个广泛的兴趣仔细研究的研究。

The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), the American high- energy physics project begun in 1983 and abruptly terminated in 1993 by Congress after $2 billion had been spent on construction, offers everyone interested in science studies a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of "big science." This four year project under the direction of Professor Lillian Hoddeson is being carried out by an experience multidisciplinary team and aims to unravel and explain the factors responsible for the genesis as well as the demise of the SSC. A proton collider more than an order of magnitude more energetic than any earlier accelerator and far more expensive, the SSC was the most ambitious particle accelerator project ever attempted. This frontier machine was intended to fulfill `the desires and aspirations of the whole US high energy community." Because of its size and cost, the alliances necessary to support this project reached deep into the political, industrial, and even military communities of the United States. Professor Hoddeson and her team aim to examine these linkages and to study how a major scientific community creates a large project and reacts to its collapse. In examining the termination of the SSC, the study will consider whether big science, which previously had grown almost without bounds, has reached a turning point, or perhaps an evolutionary dead end, and whether future projects on the scale of the SSC will ever be possible again. For more than a decade, all four members of this research team have been studying the field of high-energy physics, including the SSC, from varying perspectives-- scientific, historical, archival, philosophical, and sociological. Two of them have been communicating with SSC staff in an effort to preserve important documents as well as the collective institutional memory. This study will integrate the complementary experience of these scholars of science. They will undertake an intensive effort to study documenta tion, preserve oral recollections of principal participants, and prepare a carefully researched study of widest interest.