Snyder: Even Though It Never Flew, Project Rover Changed History

Raemer Schreiber explaining a detail of Project Rover in 1959. Courtesy/AHF

By Heather McClenahan 
Los Alamos Historical Society

​“Nuclear power not only will enhance space exploration; its use, both for propulsion and for auxiliary power, is the key to extensive outer space exploration.” —Leland Hayworth, AEC Commissioner 1961-1963 and director of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

​Rover Boulevard in White Rock gets its name from Project Rover, an ambitious and controversial program to use nuclear power for space rockets.

Doomed financially by the escalating costs of the Vietnam War and NASA’s desire to reach the moon before the Soviets, the project folded in January 1973 but not before having a huge impact on the development of small nuclear reactors and on Los Alamos.

Laboratory Director Norris Bradbury tapped Manhattan Project veteran Raemer Schrieber to head the Rover Project in 1955.

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