Why is this guy hard to replace? There are tons of college stoners who have the skills to blow you any glass you want. Visit your local head shop if you doubt this. Why not get one of those?
It's not just general glassblowing skill; it's the intersection of that skill with knowledge of the sets of uses to which it will be put, and the techniques specific to creating forms that are not just bongs and statues.
Do they work in borosilicate or in softer glasses? Can their products take a vacuum? Multiple atmospheres? Cryogenic liquids? Have they done glass/tungsten connections? Threads? Can they silver glass? What experience do they have with a glassblowing lathe? Milling using diamond tooling? CNC waterjet cutter?
That said, they would clearly have to do a lot of learning and training for the more specific scientific applications, and since many artists get thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars per piece, I'm sure you'd have a hard time luring them away. On top of that, they probably couldn't be stoned all day and would go from making art to making whatever functional objects are needed.
Well, that shows I know more about scientific glass than recreational and medical.
Still, lightlyused referred to "several glass blowers in that community" who lightlyused personally knew. My comment was in response to that. I seriously doubt that those are the ones who make high end pieces.
Bong making is not hard. It's one of the things that chemistry undergrads often do if they take a glass blowing class and the staff lets them get away with it. (Sometimes the lab teacher will even anneal your 'project'.)
I can be good enough at carpentry to make bookshelves for me and my friends. That doesn't mean I can build a good staircase.
Similarly, it would be hard to lure me away to, say, a job developing cloud computing infrastructure.