Cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider

Cancelling the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993 was the most consequential science funding mistake in U.S. history. Congress terminated the project after spending $2 billion of a projected $12 billion, leaving an 87-kilometer accelerator tunnel unfinished in Texas. This facility would have discovered the Higgs boson in 2002, a full decade before CERN's LHC, and the U.S. permanently ceded particle physics leadership to Europe as a result. The lost investment dwarfs the $8 billion Germany spent on its DESY facility, highlighting how short-term savings eroded a generation of American scientific dominance.