The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
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The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
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Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#2I have a strange take-away from this, in that the article proposes that The Manhattan Project’s underlying goal was to model the first group of prototypes as master copies for an assembly line, and that the true cost of the project was the production line, and not the first group of weapons used to test the scientific principle and ultimately bring the war to an end.
That makes sense, especially seeing the arsenal and industry grow as it did in the wake of the war.
The thing that leaves me curious is that despite the massive spending on the space program, we never see the same assembly line, or perhaps transit system, emerge from the spending.
With the space program, it would seem that all of the effort and financing really did get consumed by each moonshot, with no investment to back it up, and formulate repeatable process and the ready facility to continiously grow the number of people in orbit, and cycle rockets through their trajectories.
The nuclear energy/weapons complex and the space program seem to be comparable endeavors, but one paved the way for sustainable operations while the other produced a series of events and little else. It doesn’t seem plausible to just wave one’s hands and say that rockets are that expensive, so what gives?
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#3It'd be interesting to see a cost comparison to the USSR's program around the same time, leading up to the development of the first Soviet nuclear bomb.
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#4I have a strange take-away from this, in that the article proposes that The Manhattan Project’s underlying goal was to model the first group of prototypes as master copies for an assembly line, and that the true cost of the project was the production line, and not the first group of weapons used to test the scientific principle and ultimately bring the war to an end. That makes sense, especially seeing the arsenal an…
The government program rockets aren't designed to be cost efficient, they're designed to buy as many votes as possible. To do that, they spread everything out a thin as possible, all the work across as many states as possible so that the elected officials from each of those states will vote for it.
This is why SpaceX, with their single factory, are something like an order of magnitude cheaper.
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#5[deleted]
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#6I have a strange take-away from this, in that the article proposes that The Manhattan Project’s underlying goal was to model the first group of prototypes as master copies for an assembly line, and that the true cost of the project was the production line, and not the first group of weapons used to test the scientific principle and ultimately bring the war to an end. That makes sense, especially seeing the arsenal an…
The government program rockets aren't designed to be cost efficient, they're designed to buy as many votes as possible. To do that, they spread everything out a thin as possible, all the work across as many states as possible so that the elected officials from each of those states will vote for it. This is why SpaceX, with their single factory, are something like an order of magnitude cheaper.
If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government program rockets aren't designed to be cost efficient, they're designed to buy as many votes as possible. To do that, they spread everything out a thin as possible, all the work across as many states as possible so that the elected officials from each of those states will vote for it. This is why SpaceX, with their single factory, are something like an order of magnitude cheaper.
If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !
Not really - lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program. Plus all the support that goes with it.
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !
Not really - lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program. Plus all the support that goes with it.
> [...] lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program.
That's a pretty bad excuse: leaving the same money with the taxpayers would have funded jobs that actually did something people wanted enough to pay with their own money.
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#9That most obvious savings generated by the Manhattan Project was probably the displacement of perceived need to invade Japan. It would be nice to see an estimate of the cost of that invasion as a comparison. But the primary cost of an invasion would have been the lives of Americans and Japanese, and it would be difficult to arrive at a consensus value for that. As part of that wider comparison the cost of the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should also be included on the Manhattan Project's side of the ledger.
Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really - lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program. Plus all the support that goes with it.
> [...] lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program. That's a pretty bad excuse: leaving the same money with the taxpayers would have funded jobs that actually did something people wanted enough to pay with their own money.
It’s not purely an excuse. If somone makes 100k on one of these projects but would have made 50k if they did not exist then the economy is out 50k worth of labor. But, some of that delta between 50k>100k is payed back in additional taxes.
There is plenty of waste, but it’s significantly smaller than the direct costs suggest. Especially when such programs reduce unemployment as the economy is not out useful labor, and taxes collect a significant portion of the outlay back.