Case in point: Technical staff at the DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have built a prototype of a superconducting cryomodule for the Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) project.

Four of these 39-foot-long vessels, which weigh an astonishing 27,500 pounds each, will be responsible for accelerating hydrogen ions to more than 80% of the speed of light. Ultimately, the cryomodules will comprise the last section of the new linear accelerator, or linac, that will drive Fermilab's accelerator complex.