Comment by SiempreViernes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SiempreViernes | Hacker News Reader

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You might enjoy this report on the NIF from 2000 when it was being reviewed because of delays and cost growth:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010209102303/http://www.nrdc.o...

Has nice quotes like:

"Putting aside for a moment the vexing question of whether a "big science" machine well into the construction phase should still be plagued with numerous unresolved technology development issues, there is considerable evidence that both the science and technology underlying the NIF are not sound."

and

"While a large majority of ICFAC voted in May 1994 to support proceeding with engineering design of the NIF, [20] their decision was once again based on non-peer-reviewed LASNEX code predictions that had been hastily generated in the weeks immediately prior to the meeting. These calculations purported to demonstrate ignition with novel gas-filled hohlraum targets -- predictions that were subsequently not borne out by actual experiments conducted after the meeting."

These big projects are great at eating budget from committees. Tons of meetings, delayed results for decades resulting in limited accountability, opportunities for everyone to be part of the picture and not point fingers at each other. Not to mention bragging rights for “leading” such large projects.

We often bemoan the state of the research job market on HN. I can’t help but wonder what moving funding from these facilities to smaller experiments and research labs would do.

Well I think the catch is that, to use the US as an example, "big science" projects such as the NIF, particle accelerators, synchrotron light sources, and supercomputers are generally all funded by the DOE, while small individual research labs are generally funded by NSF or (if biomedical) NIH.

Critically, the only reason that DOE can support the cost of these "big science" projects is that they are generally "dual use" so to speak, with both basic science and national security applications. A similar dynamic is arguably at play in the funding of the largest projects in other countries as well.

So it is not clear that cutting such "big science" projects would in practice actually open up more funding for small basic science grants, lacking the same national security applications.

Or, we as a society could decide to actually fund science, big or small, and not just pad the pockets of professors at MIT or Caltech.

Whatever is happening, we're not "padding the pockets" of professors. These people are actually being paid less than jobs at comparable levels in other fields.

You would be far better off firing every single administrator at the colleges and devolving those duties back to the professors, themselves.

This would have a far more salutary effect on releasing funds for research.

Would be great to see some of these mega research projects disrupted in a way SpaceX has done for the space industry.

Although perhaps these projects are too speculative with an uncertain path to revenue (unlike Space).

> too speculative with an uncertain path to revenue (unlike Space).

It's really funny (and great) that there are actually people now that continue this phrase with the mention "unlike space". It used to be that "the best way to become a space millionaire, is to start life off as a billionaire."

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