This is really interesting! Have you read the source report? I'm curious as to why/how the predicted required budget would fluctuate so much. For such a specialised and frontier based project, surely you'd be aiming for consistent staffing (and thus consistent staff budgets) year on year no?
My guess is that is fluctuates because there are a discrete number of new experiments to be constructed, and these don't cost a constant amount during their construction.
That was my guess as well. Looking at the graphs, there are about three clear peaks in the maximum, accelerated, and aggressive plans, muddled out a bit in the moderate plan.
What are these three experiments? Which of them have already been done in the existing plan? And what others might need to be added?
Also curious is the expected total cost. Eyeballing each plan average cost and multiplying by the duration, the total costs are 6x14=84, 4x17=68, 3x22=66, and 2.5x29=72.5 billion dollars. The accelerated and aggressive plans are more expensive than the moderate plan!
I suppose there's some additional overhead costs associated with keeping the program running for 29 years instead of 17, but I would have expected all the rush orders, overtime, and extra staff to make the faster programs much more expensive.
