Well I agree that big projects make sense in many cases, and I don't want to be misunderstood as arguing against basic research.
Frankly, given the amounts we spend on things I fundamentally disagree with, I'd even say "sure let them have at it and let's find another 100B somewhere in the military budgets of the world, divert them to more research."
But even if you want to focus on "big, milestone" projects like the LHC[++] you can go for other challenges where you know that there's a tangible benefit to be had at the end.
Fusion research for example comes to mind. Hugely expensive, interesting, rewarding if successful, track record of secondary inventions.
I'm sure there are others. Off the top of my head, carbon capture and storage, better (more sustainable) battery/storage tech, elimination of rare earths in electronics, ...
Right at the moment and for the next two decades, any big money should build out solar and wind generating capacity. Physics will still be there. Physicists can work on catalysts and excitons for a while.
That's definitely a sensible position. However, I believe these goal-oriented research projects have a tendency to fall stuck in local optima. Sometimes breakthroughs may come from just more people working on it and other times they come from discoveries made in unrelated fields. By cutting ourselves off from any expensive moonshot projects without a clear goal like the LHC, some of our hard problems may never be solved and we may never know why.
Frankly, given the amounts we spend on things I fundamentally disagree with, I'd even say "sure let them have at it and let's find another 100B somewhere in the military budgets of the world, divert them to more research."
But even if you want to focus on "big, milestone" projects like the LHC[++] you can go for other challenges where you know that there's a tangible benefit to be had at the end.
Fusion research for example comes to mind. Hugely expensive, interesting, rewarding if successful, track record of secondary inventions.
I'm sure there are others. Off the top of my head, carbon capture and storage, better (more sustainable) battery/storage tech, elimination of rare earths in electronics, ...
There's no shortage of big, hard problems