The Very Large Hadron Collider: The farthest energy frontier

The Very Large Hadron Collider (or Eloisatron) represents what may well be the final step on the energy frontier of accelerator-based high energy physics. While an extremely high luminosity proton collider at 100-200 TeV center of mass energy can probably be built in one step with LHC technology, that machine would cost more than what is presently politically acceptable. This talk summarizes the strategies of collider design including staged deployment, comparison with electron-positron colliders, opportunities for major innovation, and the technical challenges of reducing costs to manageable proportions. It also presents the priorities for relevant R and D for the next few years