12The US Department Of Energy’s Superconducting Super Collider, USA
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) set to be located in the state of Texas was arguably one of the United States’ most ambitious megaprojects ever. The SSC was going to be the country’s very own particle collider. It was meant to rival even the world-famous particle collider located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN in Switzerland. Indeed, had it actually been completed, it would almost certainly have outdone CERN and discovered the now-well-known Higgs boson “God particle.”
First proposed in 1976, construction on the SSC did not start until the late 1980s. Between 1990 and 1992, costs were out of control. Suddenly the project’s viability was thrown into question. Miles of tunnels and all the access shafts had already been bored and yet the over-budget SSC project was canceled by the powers that be in 1993 regardless of the $2.4 billion that had already been sunk into it.
