You said &quot;ambitious projects&quot;. Now you&#x27;re limiting those to scientific projects.<p>Again I ask, &quot;Do you have a tally of the ones that failed?&quot;<p>Would it include the Superconducting Super Collider? ($2 billion for a hole in the ground).<p>Actually, it&#x27;s a trickier question than that. What does failure in an ambitious science project mean to you? Do you classify the two failed Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (of four) as an engineering failure, or a scientific one, or both?<p>For that matter, what is on your list of ambitious scientific projects, and how many of them have a success which is not primarily due to being a well-run engineering project? That is, the success of the Large Hadron Collider surely is due mostly to being a successful engineering project.<p>My experience is that the high-end science projects like what you are talking about (eg, the so-called &#x27;Grand Challenge&#x27; projects), are constructed so they <i>cannot fail</i>. They lack a solid, measurable goal, and any advancement is counted as a success. This failsafe means they are more likely to get political backing.