With tourism stalled, Hawaii officials are betting that a handful of high‑tech enterprises can seed new industries and keep skilled workers from fleeing to the mainland. In Kailua, behind a café where baristas make $11 lattes, young workers write code, design machinery and operate an industrial laser that cuts through a car door—all in service of the Airform, a heating and cooling system dreamed up by the engineering startup Normal Corp.\n\nElsewhere on Oahu, students at the University of Hawaii are building equipment bound for the moon. In a yurt on a hill overlooking the surf on the North Shore, young scientists use 3‑D printers to create parts for wastewater‑treatment machines.

In a Honolulu basement, engineers spin textiles out of chicken feathers.\n\nThese men and women belong to a band of whip‑smart engineers building a manufacturing and technology industry that state leaders hope will rescue Hawaii from a sagging tourism economy, depressed wages and an ongoing exodus of young residents to the mainland.\n\nBy nurturing ventures like Normal Corp’s Airform and the university’s moon‑bound projects, officials aim to diversify the economy, retain talent and replace lost tourism revenue with high‑value jobs.