End of $65 million program leaves 150 employees hired for Prometheus work with uncertain futures
By ERIC ANDERSON, Deputy business editor
First published: Saturday, September 10, 2005
NISKAYUNA -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has pulled the plug on a $65 million nuclear propulsion research program at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, leaving 150 employees in limbo.
"NASA and Naval Reactors have mutually agreed to terminate their partnership to work on Prometheus," as the program was called, a Knolls spokeswoman said Friday afternoon. "NASA has been changing its priorities. I don't have many details on this," she added.
Lockheed Martin Corp. operates Knolls under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. Knolls employs 2,700 people, including 1,500 engineers, at its laboratory in Niskayuna and at another site in West Milton.
It operates with an annual budget of $450 million.
Knolls primarily develops nuclear propulsion systems for the U.S. Navy.
Knolls added 350 employees this year, 150 of them specifically for the space research program, and it planned to add more in 2006.
Calls to NASA on Friday weren't returned, and Knolls officials couldn't be reached for additional comment.
NASA had hoped to develop the nuclear propulsion system to carry spacecraft beyond the solar system, according to a June 19 story in the Times Union.
Employees were told of the decision to halt the program in a memo Thursday afternoon. Knolls told employees it didn't yet know how it would handle the staffing issues.
This kind of explains the great information 'black hole' regarding Project Prometheus inquiries. The folks in the 'know' probably had a feeling this was coming down the pipeline--and decided not to rock the boat in any way.
I hope the assembled technology thus far developed is only mothballed, and not destroyed as some terminated programs are. It would be ashame to have to start completely over from scratch.
When I first heard that Naval Reactors was getting the Prometheus work I was quite disappointed (maybe "shocked" is a better word) -- space reactors are nothing like Naval reactors !
I would have much prefered the job going to an outfit like INSPI, perhaps in partnership with ORNL, which at least did some significant work on aircraft nukes many years ago....
In this instance I think Robert Zubrin's take on this disastrous episode is quite right -- someone seems to have thought that a Prometheus nuke-powered spacecraft would be the equivalent of nuclear submarine plying the Earth's oceans..... Literally !
I just find it a bit odd that the good folks at Knolls & Bettis didn't send them away when they came knocking -- they could have saved us this whole traumatic episode to begin with.
On the bright side, at least this tells me that Mike Griffin was able to figure out that this didn't make a whole lot of sense..... Kudos to Griffin.
