Quote Originally Posted by wumpus View Post
Hawaii is much further south than KSC, and gives you plenty of places that can launch in all direction (the US needs Vandenburg in California to launch South for polar orbits). Unfortunately, while Hawaii may have had a congressional delegation by the time launch locations were established, they had almost no seniority and couldn't bring home the pork.
Hawaii is also more than 2000 miles away from the mainland--Honolulu is farther from Los Angeles than LA is from New York City. Puerto Rico is closer and at a similar latitude, but the immense infrastructure costs of a permanent multi-use launch facility put a fair premium on something that you can easily ship to, and it's much faster and cheaper to ship rocket components a thousand miles by rail than two thousand by sea (plus another thousand by rail if the components are built inland somewhere like Ohio or Missouri).