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From the start, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) has been an academic project in every sense: designed, built, and eventually to be operated by companies and researchers working under a consortium of 79 universities called Universities Research Association (URA). No longer. Last week, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary took the job of building the $11 billion accelerator away from URA and announced plans to give it to a company more experienced with large construction projects. Clinton Administration officials hope that the change, which followed highly publicized investigations into URA's accounting and management procedures, will help convince the Senate to vote next month to preserve the accelerator and the House of Representatives to reverse its earlier vote to kill the project.
URA, which was formed in 1965 to build and operate the Fermilab particle accelerator, will still have a role in the project, overseeing the design of the SSC and managing its operation as a scientific laboratory. But overseeing actual construction of the 54-mile ring--a task that has been the source of most of the management complaints and is now about 20% completed--will go to a new contractor, yet to be named. "URA is...