[i_am_a_peasant]

In terms of precission engineering LHC is for sure more complex. But then again ISS is made out of many life-critical systems. In safety critical systems a the actual hardware may look simpler in some ways than stuff you see on the bleeding edge for that category of product, but then the complexity is in turning it into something that can be safety certifiable. Just different math entirely.

ie there's lots of fun applications for radar, some of them have very complex math involved in manufacturing processes. Then you got automotive radar, you mainly need to get the position and velocity of some objects, the math is simpler. But you have to certify that stuff for ASIL-D, no one makes you ASIL-D radars, so you combine multiple radars. 3'Bs make a D as the saying goes.. Then you gotta worry about BOM costs because you want to ship 10 million cars..