![\"\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/baldauf1.jpg\" "\\"baldauf1\\"")
<\/a>In the early 1990\u2019s, 150 feet below ground in Waxahachie, Texas, the nation\u2019s top engineers collaborated on a project of enormous scale: the construction of a superconducting super collider facility that would have exceeded the scope of CERN\u2019s large hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland.<\/p>\nFunded by the U.S. Department of Energy, giant tunnel boring machines with 14 foot diameter drill bits carved a loop of tunnels intended to house the facility.<\/p>\n
But after two years of construction, in 1993, Congress pulled the plug on the funding of the super collider, re-directing national funding to the development of the international space station instead.<\/p>\n
Today, the vast network of underground tunnels has been filled in, any possibility for the project\u2019s revival erased.<\/p>\n
Steven Baldauf, a 1974 UConn graduate, who was the supervising structural engineer of the super collider\u2019s design team, called the project\u2019s loss of funding a tragedy.<\/p>\n
He described the super collider project as \u201chuge in terms of scope and budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baldauf completed a five-year, dual program that earned him a bachelor of arts degree from Fairfield University and a bachelor\u2019s of science degree in civil engineering from UConn.<\/p>\n
After graduating, he was employed by a Manhattan based engineering firm, Gibbs & Hill, Inc. When the firm expanded to Dallas in 1978, Baldauf took the opportunity to relocate. Through evening classes, he earned a master\u2019s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1981.<\/p>\n
He came to work on the super collider as an employee of the Dallas branch office of Parsons Brinkerhoff, which was awarded the project by the Department of Energy.<\/p>\n
Baldauf quickly rose to manage between 40 and 50 other engineers as the structural supervisor of the project. \u201cWe prepared all the plans and specifications for the facility,\u201d Baldauf said.<\/p>\n
The superconducting super collider called for a series of underground tunnels through which scientists would accelerate atomic particles within two counter rotating circular paths, accelerated by two rings of powerful magnets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe magnets looked like torpedoes, each about 60 feet long and connected end to end,\u201d Baldauf said.<\/p>\n
In an area named as the interaction hall, the beams of particles were to be directed to collide in the presence of sophisticated detectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur country\u2019s high energy physicists would have been conducting experiments on home court,\u201d Baldauf said. \u201cNow we must pay a fee to use the CERN facility so that our physicists have the right to get on the end of the line.\u201d<\/p>\n