State’s Loss of Super Collider Could Be Tip of the Iceberg, Scientists Say

California may have lost its chance to be home to the superconducting super collider on technical grounds, but some of the state’s top scientists warned Wednesday that the state should be ready for similar disappointments--for political as well as technical reasons--in the future.

At the same time, they urged the state and its congressional delegation to continue supporting the $4.4-billion atom smasher. Ultimately, they said, the decision to build the facility is more important than where it will be built.

“There is a gain for the whole country because this means the process is moving along,” said Burton Richter, director of the federally funded Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a Nobel laureate in physics. “It’s an important facility.”

Raymond Orbach, provost of the college of letters and science at UCLA and a physicist, sees California’s elimination from the super collider race as extremely unfortunate because it comes at a time when other states are mounting strong bids to lure more science and technology to their areas.

“I think it’s terrible,” he said. “It’s a real loss for California. . . . The people who work on these machines are among our most sophisticated scientists. If they have to go to another state to do their research, it takes them away from the University of California.”

Third Failure for State

The collider represents the third national science facility that California has tried--and failed--to lure in the last four years. The state finished second in competition for a supercomputer design center that ultimately was built at the University of Texas in Austin and for an earthquake research laboratory set up at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The state still is in the running to host Sematech--a new facility funded half by the federal government and half by a consortium of private industry. It is designed to develop new and better uses for semiconductors.

As the home of Silicon Valley, California might seem a natural setting for such a center. But its rich history of computer development may actually work against it, scientists warn, just as California’s reputation as the most high-tech state may cost it other future programs.

Nick Nichols, director of the Industrial Relations Center at Caltech, said California has such an abundance of riches among the sciences that it “may be almost too powerful,” resulting in a tendency by some national leaders to put projects like the super collider in other areas.

“It’s a sharing-the-wealth kind of thing,” Nichols noted. “California is a real exciting place in science and technology. It may be too exciting.”

Just a Site Proposal

However, Alvin W. Trivelpiece, executive officer of the Washington-based American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, said California’s loss in the race should not reflect on the state’s academic or research communities.

“This (process) had to do with a site proposal. It did not have to do with California’s scientific community,” said Trivelpiece, the former director of the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Research. “This was just a search for a piece of real estate with the right geology and enough (electric) power available to run the machine.”

Orbach said he has no doubt the collider recommendations were based only on technical grounds. But he noted that the stiff competition among 25 states for this one project indicates that future federal programs may be subject to even more political pressure from states seeking a bigger share of the action.

“There are movements for equitable geographical distribution” of federal funding, he said. “When you add those forces with the loss of this machine, it presents a bleak picture.”

The obvious loss to California begins with the $4.4-billion price tag for the 53-mile-long particle accelerator--which, if approved by Congress, would be the largest and most expensive scientific instrument ever built.

Orbach compared the super collider to the space program.

“Think of the Houston Space Center and . . . what that has meant to that community,” he said, referring to the many technological facilities grouped around the center. “That’s what we are going to lose here.”

Lee Dye reported from Los Angeles and Mark A. Stein from San Francisco.