Vote to Kill Super Collider Imperils 75 San Diego Jobs
Wednesday’s vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to kill funding for the so-called superconducting super collider in Texas has jeopardized the jobs of 75 San Diego engineering and management employees of General Dynamics.
The local workers, plus 65 General Dynamics employees in Hammond, La., are making prototype magnets weighing 14 tons each for the super collider, which was planned as a 54-mile ring of giant magnets in Ellis County, Tex. The General Dynamics group is working under terms of a $206-million contract it won last year to deliver magnet prototypes.
The super collider project is not yet dead, as the Senate could still vote to approve it later this summer. That would force a conference with House members on compromise funding for the collider. The price tag for the research project originally was to have been $10 billion.
The House vote was certainly a “disappointment,” General Dynamics spokesman Jack Isabel said Thursday. But, asked whether the contract for prototypes will be stopped if the Senate follows the House’s lead and kills the super collider, Isabel declined to speculate.
The House vote “was only the first step in the budget process,” Isabel said. “It’s the beginning of a process, and I’m not going to get into a conversation about ‘what if.’. . . We have not gotten a stop-work order.”
Scientists had planned to study the energy field created by the 8,150 magnets, which measure 2 feet in diameter, in hopes of advancing high-energy physics research. The project was to have been in operation by the end of the decade.
About $850 million has already been spent on the project, including General Dynamics’ contract to deliver 305 magnets through 1994.
In 1995, General Dynamics and Westinghouse, which also is supplying giant prototype magnets, were to have competed to supply the thousands more magnets needed to build the super collider. In Hammond, where the giant magnets are assembled, General Dynamics employment was to have grown to 150 by the end of this year.
Isabel added that, even if the super collider is killed, some of the 75 employees in San Diego could be reassigned to other contracts.
Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this story.
