Man countries, including Italy are spending money on the F35 strikefightr, which is built to carry nuclear weapons, and is useless against terrorists who use pistols, knives, cars, and trucks. They cost about 150 million dollars each.
That money could be better spent on new particle accelerators, which don't kill anybody.

Tullio

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Which was grounded by the USA & UK. Similar problems were experienced by the "new" USN vessels which cost upwards of $40 billion. The new particle accelerator is small fry in comparison.

Italy has built two aircraft carriers, the Garibaldi and Cavour, whose decks are not long enough to launch conventional planes like F18 and F22, so the admirals insist on having the F35s in place of the Harriers they have used so far. The whole fleet of UK Harriers was bough by the US Marine Corps.
Tullio

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I just received the last online issue of the ":Bulletin of the atomic scientists'". The modernization program of American nuclear weapons is going to cost 1 trillion US dollars. No comment.
Tullio

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That may be so, but look back to the 30's & 40's. The scientists & engineers who worked on ENIAC & Colossus. Yes they were done to resolve particular issues, but look what arose from them. Further science & engineering which finally became useful 4 decades later.

The billions spent achieving that - was it wasteful? One cannot have success without failure.

Can just imagine all posters writing their comments on stone tablets. :-)

There has to be many discoveries that waited years before someone else or technology caught up before a use was found. In my working life I came across two, "phase locked loops" and the "Sagnac Effect".

Quite and I can envision and entire area of quantum electronics built upon some future discoveries from basic fundamental particle research. Or course every integrated circuit that exists today does so because of the mad rants of someone who insisted we have a moon shot. Can you see us all with a vacuum tube computer and CRT display on every work desk? No cell phone, laptops, tablets, calculators, pagers, SETI ...

When you do real research you don't know what you will find. That is the entire point!

Heck how many years after Einstein described the LASER did it take for someone to actually build one?

Heck how many years after Einstein described the LASER did it take for someone to actually build one?

Or Robert Goddard in the early 20's with his ideas on Rocketry. :-)

Particle accelerators are used to treat cancer and there is a group at CERN working on this area. My daughter, in her thesis, wrote software for a hadron medical accelerator which was to be built in Milano and then went to Pavia for political reasons, so she ended in a software house for commercial uses.
Tullio

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Both Defense spending and Science spending spend money which I give with taxes I pay. I have the right to criticize both. In my humble opinion all nuclear warheads should be dismantled and the fissile material contained in them used as a fuel of fission reactors, which are still needed to avoid global warming until a working fusion reactor is finally built. I have read The Manchester Guardian articles which say that the cost of building the Hinkley Point fission reactor is artificially maintained high to subsidize the cost of nuclear weapons. The press is free, says the USA Constitution.
Tullio

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I don't have a beard and don't wear sandals but I eat Muesly for breakfast. I am a reader of the "Bulletin of the atomic scientists" , which is an American magazine. I am somehow an American myself, since i have studied there
Tullio

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Chris you fail to see that "blue sky" research is beneficial to us, even ignoring the fact we are an inquisitive species that wants answers to everything, then looking at Buckminsterfullerene, AKA buckyballs, might help.

https://www.understandingnano.com/buckyballs-fullerenes.html

Buckyballs: Uses and Applications | Fullerenes

The properties of buckyballs (also known as fullerenes) have caused researchers and companies to consider using them in several fields. The following survey of buckyball applications introduces many of these uses. Click on any of the links below to go to a detailed explanation.
A survey of buckyball uses:

Buckyballs may be used to trap free radicals generated during an allergic reaction and block the inflammation that results from an allergic reaction.

The antioxidant properties of buckyballs may be able to fight the deterioration of motor function due to multiple sclerosis.

Combining buckyballs, nanotubes, and polymers to produce inexpensive solar cells that can be formed by simply painting a surface.

Buckyballs may be used to store hydrogen, possibly as a fuel tank for fuel cell powered cars.

Buckyballs may be able to reduce the growth of bacteria in pipes and membranes in water systems.

Researchers are attempting to modify buckyballs to fit the section of the HIV molecule that binds to proteins, possibly inhibiting the spread of the virus.

Making bullet proof vests with inorganic (tungsten disulfide) buckyballs.

A medical application https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4124742/

Chris, a Linac is the first part of a circular accelerator like LHC. There are Electron Storage Rings which are circular accelerators that produce X-rays at a modulated energy and also coherent X-rays. One of them is installed at Basovizza near Trieste where I worked, and one of its beam lines is used for mammography, that is searching for breast cancers. But the latest medical accelerators use heavy particles (called hadrons) and also carbon ions to treat cancers which cannot be treated by surgery, especially brain tumors. Another Electron Storage Ring is SESAME near Amman in Jordan and it is a true international institution, which gets help from CERN and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare which provided it with magnets. Its scientific director is an Italian who came from the Elettra Synchrotron in Basovizza (Basovica in Slovene, since theCarso/Karst region is inhabited by Slovene speaking people, like Boris Pahor, 106, who is a survivor from the Garman lagers and whose books were translated first in French and only later in Italian).
I love the Carso highland, with its trees, rocks,and caves in its limestone.
Tullio

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Why doing Big-Science like particle physics research?
In principle, all physics (and practical applications developed therefrom) can be derived from the study of fundamental particles.
In practice, even if "particle physics" is taken to mean only "high-energy atom smashers", many technologies have been developed during these pioneering investigations that later find wide uses in society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_physics#Practical_applications

Why does Big-Science cost Big-Money?
Because Big-Science require Big-Machines.

Some says "Spend it on research on solving global warming instead".
21 billion dollar from 23 countries is a drop in the ocean for that.

Some says "Let the war industry pay a larger part".
They are also beneficiaries of particle physics research.
21 billion dollar is a drop in the ocean for them.

What is 2019 Annual Contributions to CERN budget?
Roughly 1,2 billion CHF/dollar.
https://fap-dep.web.cern.ch/rpc/2019-annual-contributions-cern-budget

People from all the world, including Russian and Chinese, work at CERN. Arabs, Islamic people, Jews and Christians work at SESAME in Jordan. Italy has built a cafeteria where Islam people can eat Halal, Jews Kosher and the rest good Italian food and wine. It is the only place in the Middle East dedicated to peaceful research, including the analysis of Dead Sea Scrolls.
Tullio

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"Spend it on research on solving global warming instead".

If in fact we are warming, and Mankind is contributing to the warming , then there is nothing that we can do to have any impact short of total annihilation.

I am afraid that draconian measures will be enacted by the ignorantia (new word?) To make the cost of energy into another tax to fatten the government coffers to be re-distributed to keep the ruling parties in power.

As for the money involved for the next Super Collider; it is probably less than the cost of a shrimp bowl at the Davos economic summit --LOL

Would seem that the climate change skeptics cannot agree. In 2006 Prof Don Easterbrook said "If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035, then warm about 0.5°C from ~2035 to ~2065, and cool slightly until 2100. The total increase in global warming for the century should be ~0.3 °C, rather than the catastrophic warming of 3-6°C (4-11°F) predicted by the IPCC."

In my view there are two kinds of areas of research.

Case 1 could be that a team set out to find a cure for a particular type of cancer. They know what their goal is and have to find a way to get the result that they want. It may very well be that they will have to invent new methods of doing things and make innovative research. They might not know what is going to achieve their aim, but they do know what they want.

In Case 2, the FCC is being proposed to be built upon the basis that they haven't a clue what they might find if anything. Although previous experience makes it reasonable to assume that there are more exotic particles to be found. Even if they do find something after a few years, they don't know what benefit it will achieve, or if it slots into this standard model of physics.

When we are talking billions of tax payers money, it is not hard to see why case 1 gets funded, and case 2 becomes controversial. In any research at the leading edge of technology, there will likely be unexpected spin offs, but you can't quantify that at the beginning.

You can't compare the cost of scientific research against Defence spending, they are quite different areas. If you don't carry out research you don't learn and improve. If you don't consolidate and modernise a country's defence than it could be invaded and taken over by another country. Both approaches by a government benefit the population, but in different ways.

Particle accelerators are basically atom smashers which produce even smaller particles from high speed collisions. The LINAC is a mini cousin of the LHC. It uses the same technology but it produces X-rays not exotic particles.

mini-particle-accelerators

BBC - Teen one of first UK proton-beam patients

In the 1973 Science&Technology Yearbook of the Mondadori Encyclopedia of Science and Technology I published two articles on cancer therapy by particles heavier than the electron. One by dr.Kirby G. Vosburgh, Staff physicist , Princeton Particle Accelerator, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. The second by prof. David K. Bewley, Chief Physicist, Medical Research Council, Cyclotron Unit, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK. I am glad to see that this field has proceeded.
Tullio

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An article on the Pavia center for which my daughter was writing software.
https://fondazionecnao.it/it/cosa-facciamo/i-tumori-trattabili
Tullio

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Physicists are not unanimous about the need of a bigger accelerator. One must remember the very critical book "La spirale delle alte energie" of Angelo Baracca and Silvio Bergia, Bompiani, 1975. I also remember an article by Emilio Segre' on "Endeavor" magazine about the same time. Japan has refused to build an International Linear Collider. The decision to build or not a new machine at CERN will be taken in 2020, says "Nature". Only China seems determined to go ahead with a 100 km ring,like the one proposed at CERN. Maybe one of them would be enough, but this would signify a cooperation with China. Instead both the KAGRA interferometer in Japan and the Advanced LIGO observatory in India seem ready to go. Maybe gravitation research is now the bleeding edge of physics.
Tullio

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Maybe gravitation research is now the bleeding edge of physics.

Gravitation research has always led to other discoveries but not to really finding the answer to what gravity is.
https://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/
Well it's not the cause of some God anyway.
But so far only string theories, many dimensions theories, is there a gravition and many other hypothesis...
Since the gravity force is so ridiculous small compared to the other three natural forces in nature, finding the so called gravitons eventually seems impossible even with colliders much bigger than the FCC.
But who knows. We might be lucky.