The Superconducting Super Collider was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas.Its planned ring circumference was 87.1km with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was set to be the world's largest and most energetic. It would have greatly surpassed the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider which has ring circumference 27km and energy of 6.5 TeV per proton. The project's director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Louis Ianniello served as its first Project Director for 15 months. The project was cancelled in 1993 due to budget problems.Proposal and developmentThe system was first formally discussed in the December 1976 National Reference Designs Study, which examined the technical and economic feasibility of a machine with the design capacity of 20 TeV per proton. Fermilab director and subsequent Nobel physics prizewinner Leon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect or proposer – of the Superconducting Super Collider project, which was endorsed around 1983, and a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.An extensive U.S. Department of Energy review was done during the mid-1980s. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 23.5km of tunnel were bored by late 1993.
