[marcosdumay]

> If they truly believe in the project they'll have a dozen technologies that need to be developed to make their project happen, all of which have practical applications beyond their experiment.

I don't think one should even have to demonstrate "practical applications beyond the experiment" beforehand. Just that it is a complete problem that can be solved independently from the entire project.

If there are a lot of those, it's much better to fund those and get the results that will push the cost of the full thing down. Even if the total costs turn up to be higher than focusing on the collider from the start.