One of the problems we have is that we are generally inculcated by our educational system to just think "science is good", without asking how good. But when we're talking about things like massive supercolliders, which cost things that start looking less like "a grant from the National Science Foundation" and more like "the entire economic output of a small country for a couple of decades", we need to ask whether we're getting enough science bang for our science buck, because not even science is actually immune to that question.
The LHC is honestly pretty questionable on that front. One can debate what was expected, but what is perhaps easier to wrap your mind around is certainly the LHC would have been immensely more valuable if it had found all sorts of supersymmetric particles, right?
Personally I think the most potent criticism of building yet another, even larger collider is just that such a collider requires essentially strangling the entire rest of the field for decades on end, and indeed, at this level of expense, strangling neighboring fields for decades on end, to fund something that doesn't have a terribly clear through-line on its value, on any dimension, practical or purely scientific. It's almost like "let's build a larger collider" is just a reflex at this point. There's a lot of interesting things bubbling on the fringe right now, and I don't mean the crazy fringe, I mean the scientific fringe. Maybe we should take a bit of a break from particle colliders for a bit and put some money into those things for a while.
We don't have infinite money, and we don't have guaranteed money; pouring vast, vast quantities of money into a new collider could well inhibit future research monies. It is still important to think about not whether we "should" spend the money in this or that way, because that always produces more "yes" answers than we actually have money for. The question is, is this the best way to spend money? And given the staggering amount we're talking, it's a high bar for this to be "best". Personally I'd really rather see at least a decade or so of just spreading things around a bit more, rather than pouring all of that into what is essentially a single project.
Additionally, while you're talking about budget in a practical manner, spending money on science to discover science isn't something that people outside of science generally love spending money on. I am nearly certain that part of the hope for people spending that kind of money on the LHC is not only might they discover something amazing but that it might also be practically useful to someone else.
There are other scientific fields that produce much more tangible results that the finite funding could go to. Even something like materials science which could not only produce more useful discoveries but could also make the next collider cheaper.
One of the problems we have is that we are generally inculcated by our educational system to just think "science is good", without asking how good. But when we're talking about things like massive supercolliders, which cost things that start looking less like "a grant from the National Science Foundation" and more like "the entire economic output of a small country for a couple of decades", we need to ask whether we're getting enough science bang for our science buck, because not even science is actually immune to that question.
The LHC is honestly pretty questionable on that front. One can debate what was expected, but what is perhaps easier to wrap your mind around is certainly the LHC would have been immensely more valuable if it had found all sorts of supersymmetric particles, right?
Personally I think the most potent criticism of building yet another, even larger collider is just that such a collider requires essentially strangling the entire rest of the field for decades on end, and indeed, at this level of expense, strangling neighboring fields for decades on end, to fund something that doesn't have a terribly clear through-line on its value, on any dimension, practical or purely scientific. It's almost like "let's build a larger collider" is just a reflex at this point. There's a lot of interesting things bubbling on the fringe right now, and I don't mean the crazy fringe, I mean the scientific fringe. Maybe we should take a bit of a break from particle colliders for a bit and put some money into those things for a while.
We don't have infinite money, and we don't have guaranteed money; pouring vast, vast quantities of money into a new collider could well inhibit future research monies. It is still important to think about not whether we "should" spend the money in this or that way, because that always produces more "yes" answers than we actually have money for. The question is, is this the best way to spend money? And given the staggering amount we're talking, it's a high bar for this to be "best". Personally I'd really rather see at least a decade or so of just spreading things around a bit more, rather than pouring all of that into what is essentially a single project.