This is the middle of Germany. "Off road" means "across someone else's property, destroying a large strip of it". It looks like they had enough trouble getting it the last 7km.

I presume the height of it means it won't fit under bridges on either road or canal.

Right. The better way to look at is is that once you exceed the size of the roads, land is extremely expensive to cross, while water is extremely cheap. So a 8993 km water journey + 7 km land journey can easily be cheaper than a 400 km land journey.

Im a bit surprised that that thing fit under all the bridges on the Danube

Germany is also home to enormously gigantic machines like the Bagger 288 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288) that are so enormous you can see them from space.

The scale of this thing is staggering. In one incident it accidentally scooped up a bulldozer: http://imgur.com/gallery/rU3XU

Also shown there is what it looks like when it's on the move along a carefully planned and prepared route: http://i.imgur.com/51x5NIR.jpg?1

I'm sure the budget for moving a scientific device isn't as huge as something involved in mineral extraction where time equals money.

You can't see that thing from space.

With optics you definitely would, but with optics you can see a single human from space.

It wouldn't take more than binoculars. The bare patch of ground this thing has made is gigantic.

It's not just the digger, there's this conveyor system that's an integral part of the system that looks miles long.

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8674604,6.6073151,43657m/dat...

Jeebus that thing is huge. That wasn't a small bulldozer. It's not the biggest they make but it's definitely no joke. It weighs 18 tons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_D6

This is from the tributary of the Danube to that of the Rhine, so there will be mountains in between. There may be tunnels, but I bet they aren't large enough for this.

Any company building this kind of stuff will be familiar with the problem of shipping stuff to the customer.

So, I guesstimate that this problem and the solution were foreseen before they started construction.

Most of that distance is on fairly calm waters, and they got it as close as 7km of the destination, without having to create ad hoc one-time solutions and live test them with the product to deliver. Any difference in cost is probably tiny compared with the value of that instrument.

Assuming they could even get permission for a land route given the usual max weight is 40 tonnes, not 200.

they must have, they went by land to and from the sea.

Not according to this article. They went by river to and from the sea.