Super Collider Vote Said to Dim Future of U.S. Science : Physics: House move to cut funding has doomed the atom smasher project, backers concede. Experts foresee a relinquishing of technology leadership.
When the House killed the superconducting super collider, it consigned the United States to the back-bench in the prestigious field of high-energy physics, angry supporters of the particle accelerator said Thursday.
Amid bitter recriminations, backers of the project, including senior Bush Administration officials, conceded that the giant atom smasher is doomed after an unexpectedly strong House vote Wednesday night terminated its funding.
And they held out little hope that the Senate--even if it can restore the funding in a conference committee later--could do much more than delay the project’s ultimate demise.
The vote was a harsh blow to scientists who study the basic forces of nature by examining the debris resulting from high-speed collisions of subatomic particles.
“We’ve always been perceived as being the center of the universe in science. But now that center is shifting elsewhere. And it will make it even harder to attract the best people,” lamented University of Maryland physicist Robert Park, head of the American Physical Society.
“We are no longer going to be serious players in this business, and I don’t know when we’d recover enough of our normal enthusiasm to begin again,” said Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate and chairman of the board of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.
His dejection was shared by many other super collider backers, including President Bush’s science adviser, D. Allan Bromley, who spoke of his “disappointment” and quoted Bush as saying:
“We cannot afford to relinquish our leadership in science and technology. Our nation’s economic competitiveness and standard of living rest on it.”
Other sources said that both the White House and the super collider’s manager, the Department of Energy, were taken totally off guard by the House vote and some project officials Thursday were livid at the White House for not delivering the votes for the project.
“They tell us to worry about the physics in Texas and that they’d take care of things in Washington,” fumed one official who asked that he not be named. “It makes you wonder who’s running the White House, if anybody.”
While the Senate could restore some funding, even if it can persuade the House to go along, the project still is unlikely to obtain sufficient money to thrive. As a result, the super collider, which is being built in Waxahachie, Tex., about 30 miles south of Dallas, likely will experience significant delays and cost overruns, which in turn would further erode its tenuous support on Capitol Hill. Super collider officials said that each day’s delay costs the project about $1 million.
“This is a real blow. Even if it’s reversed, it’s going to be fragile,” said Lederman.
Kent Jeffreys, director of environmental studies at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, agreed. “The odds of the Senate voting for it--and in such substantial numbers that they can then push it in a conference with the House--just isn’t likely, not in a year when fiscal responsibility is at the top of the public agenda,” he said.
“It will be an uphill fight,” conceded Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), a strong super collider champion. He likened killing the project to “burning our scientific seed corn.”
In voting to deprive the super collider of $484 million for fiscal 1993, many House members clearly were exercising their new-found resolve to reduce the federal budget deficit. By a margin of 232 to 181, they overwhelmed supporters, who argued that the project would not only keep America at the forefront of science but provide thousands of jobs throughout the country. Seventy-nine Republicans and one independent congressman joined 152 Democrats in the vote. Only a year ago, the House supported the super collider by an 87-vote margin.
Some $850 million has been spent on the project, with $680 million of that in the form of contracts to researchers and construction firms in 46 states.
The super collider laboratory in Texas has a payroll of 2,000 people, with as many as 7,000 people whose livelihoods are tied to the project, from construction workers to research scientists, according to Russ Wylie, a super collider spokesman in Waxahachie.
In recent years, the major driving force for building a super collider was the ardent desire among American high-energy physicists to recapture their once-undisputed leadership from the Europeans, who in recent years have taken the lead in the field.
“It was the Olympics, and now the competition is over,” said one U.S. physicist.
Another result of the House vote, the Bush Administration is said to believe, is that Japan is now unlikely to come up with the estimated $1-billion contribution to the project that Washington has been delicately seeking from Tokyo.
Without at least $1.7 billion in foreign contributions, the project cannot go forward--a formula mandated by an increasingly frustrated Congress as the project’s cost rose over the years--from below $4 billion to more than $11 billion.
“This looks very bad for getting international support,” conceded a senior Administration official. “It all but torpedoes any chances of getting foreign support.”
Yukihide Hayashi, a science affairs officer at the Japanese Embassy here, declined to comment on that prospect, saying simply that a recently formed bilateral “working group” is still scheduled to meet in Washington next month.
Vote on Super Collider
The Times incorrectly reported in Thursday editions the votes of California delegation members during a vote in the House of Representatives to end funding for the super collider research project. The correct votes:
Democrats who voted against funding the super collider--Beilenson, Berman, Boxer, Condit, Dellums, Dooley, Edwards, Lantos, Lehman, Martinez, Miller, Panetta, Pelosi, Roybal, Stark, Waters, Waxman.
Republicans against--Campbell, Doolittle, Herger, Lewis, Lowery, McCandless, Rohrabacher, Thomas.
Democrats for--Anderson, Brown, Dixon, Fazio, Levine, Matsui, Mineta, Torres.
Republicans for--Cox, Cunningham, Dannemeyer, Dornan, Dreier, Gallegly, Hunter, Lagomarsino, Moorhead, Packard, Riggs.
Democrats not voting--Dymally.
