One third of the SSC costs is supposed to be “nonfederal,” but benefactors are hard to find. During trips to Tokyo this autumn, White House science adviser D. Allan Bromley and Secretary of State James Baker each tried to coax a few hundred billion yen from the Japanese. Both returned with their cups empty. (So far, the only foreign aid is a $50 million pledge from India.) If Congress loses its enthusiasm for the SSC, that might free up money for labs closer to home. The DOE’s physics budget may soon face a 10 percent cut, which would bring hundreds of layoffs at labs such as Fermilab in Illinois and the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California. One physicist calls it “a formula for mediocrity.”
Will subatomic particles ever zip around under the plains of Texas? Recent DOE missteps haven’t helped its chances. When a House committee requested documents that could reveal a pattern of lowballing SSC cost estimates and overstating the likelihood of foreign contributions, the DOE at first denied the documents existed. Last month the agency delivered them. “There seem to be two stages to this type of project,” says a congressional staffer. “Too soon to tell [its true costs] and too late to stop” once they’re accurately known.
