the 10 most expensive experiments

TEN MOST EXPENSIVE EXPERIMENTS

01

$150 Billion
International Space Station (£92 billion)
Weighing nearly 420 tonnes and floating 370km above the earth, the iss has been continuously occupied by astronauts from
various countries since the first crew docked on 2 november 2000.


02
$20.6 Billion
International Thermonuclear experimental reactor (£12.3 billion)
In 2010 construction began in france on what will become the world’s largest tokamak fusion device –
a magnetically confined core in which fuel will be heated to
temperatures greater than 150,000,000°c.


03
$8 Billion  
James Webb Space Telescope (£4.9 billion)
Scheduled to launch in 2018, this telescope – a nasa project with input from the european and canadian space Agencies – will investigate how galaxies form by peering out to the farthest reaches of space.


04
$6.65 Billion 
International linear collider (£4.1 billion)
A planned particle accelerator even bigger than the large Hadron collider, the
ilc will use a straight path rather than a circular one to measure particle collisions more accurately. sites in europe, the usa and Japan are currently being considered, with construction due to begin by 2016.


05
$6.4 Billion
Seattle Kingdome demolition
When: 26 March 2000
Large Hadron collider
(£3.84 billion) the 20 member states of cern
(conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire – the
european council for nuclear research)
picked up most of the cost of the 27 km circumference tunnel and equipment, with significant
contributions coming from an additional six observer nations.


06
$3.26 Billion
CassiniHuygens Spacecraft (£2 billion)
launched in 1997, the cassini orbiter
entered saturn’s orbit in 2004, at which point the Huygens lander probe separated to
investigate the ringed planet’s largest moon, titan.


07
$3.1 Billion  
Envisat (£1.9 billion)
launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the european space Agency’s facility in
french Guiana in 2002, envisat spent 10 years in orbit monitoring signs of environmental impact and climate change on earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and ice. Ground control lost contact with the satellite in 2012.


08
$2.7 Billion 
Human genome project (£1.65 billion) 
Work to map the entire human genome began in 1990; it had a budget of $3 billion and was expected to take 15 years – but was completed two years early and under budget.


09  
$2.5 Billion
curiosity rover (£1.5 billion)
this car-sized robotic rover was designed to investigate whether life could ever have existed on mars. its original two-year mission was extended
indefinitely at the end of 2012, and it continues to explore the Gale crater.


10
$2 Billion
Superconducting Super collider (£1.2 billion) 
construction on a particle accelerator with an 87kmcircumference ring in texas was halted in 1983 – but not until after nearly half of the $4.4bn budget had been spent.