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Charges of political favoritism began to fly almost as soon as Energy Secretary John Herrington announced that Texas had won the competition for the $4.4 billion superconducting supercollider (SSC), designed to be the world's ! largest and most powerful atom smasher. Led by Arizona's Dennis DeConcini, Senators from several also-ran states protested to President Reagan that "there is a widespread perception that this decision was based . . . on political and other factors." They called for an investigation by both the General Accounting Office and a commission of "nationally respected physicists." Other legislators issued similar complaints...
...Should SSC designers move ahead with plans to use conventional, low- temperature superconducting magnets, known quantities that are already in place and operating at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator in Batavia, Ill.? Or should they hold off indefinitely, awaiting development of the new high- temperature superconducting variety, which may someday be able to generate even stronger magnetic fields at less cost...
Some scientists, particularly those opposed to the SSC for other reasons, have expressed concern that the rapid developments in superconductivity could warrant a redesign of the accelerator. "It might be possible to shrink the radius down to ten miles," says Cornell Physicist James Krumhansl, president- elect of the American Physical Society. "What I say is, let's put the matter into one more year of research and development and review it next year...
Proponents of delay, Lederman charges, are more concerned about the tremendous cost of the SSC, which they think will siphon federal funds away from other branches of science: "They see the new superconductors as a weapon with which to slay the SSC...
Krumhansl excludes himself from that category. "It would be wrong to say I'm against the SSC," he says. "It's great scientifically. In fact, it's mind blowing. The problem is that over the past five years there has been a slow starvation of what I call 'small science.' I say first get small science in good shape, and then by all means proceed with the SSC...