LHC’s $US21 Million Single Joint Failure is the Most Expensive Soldering Error in Soldering History

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most complicated machine that was felled by a single faulty solder joint last month, won’t be back until summer 2009 now, at the earliest–a few months later than CERN last speculated. And at what cost? $US21 million in repairs. A drop in the bucket when the full $US10 billion budget is considered, yes, but let’s hope some of this dough is spent on a bit more magnet-meltdown-preventing solder redundancy. [AP]