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The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

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Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#41

Post by avar »

herodotus wrote: post #19

> For example, one of the questions that people ask me again and again is how close the Germans were to getting an atomic bomb. The answer is, more or less, not very close at all. Why not? Because even if their scientific understanding was not too far away — which it was not, even though they were wrong about several things and behind on several others — they never came close to the stage that would be necessary to t…

I found this conference talk about WWII being at its heart a "battle of the factories" enlightening on this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ#t=26m20s

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#42

Post by wcarey »

hirundo wrote: post #9

That 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 destruc…

Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan by Giangreco is a comparison of the American plans for the invasion of the Home Islands with the Japanese plans for their defense. It talks through the cost in live of such an invasion. Though it doesn't explicitly speak to the value of the Manhattan project, it argues for it indirectly by explaining the horrifying brutality that would have been that invasion.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#43

Post by ncmncm »

I find it curious that if you add up the very first column of figures in the article -- cost in current dollars -- you find that it comes to way over 40 billion dollars, not 30.

Points taken about industrial might, and Germany's increasing industrial output throughout the war, despite all the (apparently ineffectual) bombing, though. Maybe leave off the sums?

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#44

Post by iguy »

Nomentatus wrote: post #22
gedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this splits hairs a bit, as the Potsdam Declaration[1] already had warned of utter destruction unless Japan surrendered. Our firebomb raids had already demonstrated this resolve and killed more civilians than the atomic bombs, in likely more horrific ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration

This is to one side of the point - many historians hold that the U.S. was keen to demonstrate the power of these bombs in order to cow the U.S.S.R., (and prove they were practical) even if it meant delaying the end of the war. Firebombing was even more effective (but not economical) in killing Japanese civilians, as you note. However, firebombing would not have been as effective vs the Soviets (far less flimsy, compa…

Besides cowing the USSR, I think that a valid war aim was fully cowing Japan.

One of the lessons of WWI was that military victory wasn't enough, too many Germans could tell themselves afterwards that they were stabbed in the back, etc. If the goal was to defeat Japanese fascism, then it was important that no Japanese could believe such things afterwards. And for this, a shocking weapon (one plane, one city) was effective in a way that (say) a starvation blockade would not have been.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#45

Post by iguy »

eru wrote: post #8
bluedino wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

There's also a strategic purpose: it's easier to hire ICBM designers if designing ICBMs isn't the sole career path for them.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#46

Post by iguy »

mtreis86 wrote: post #18
modelRocketry wrote: post #2

I 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…

Those two projects were directly intertwined. The Titan missile is what took people into space in Project Gemini. The space program was, in my opinion, a front for the intercontinental ballistic missile program.

Not even a front, I'd say, that implies this was somewhat hidden. The first thing anyone thought about Sputnik was that it could as well be a bomb. Rockets reliable enough to fly celebrities to orbit were pretty direct advertising of each nation's capabilities. (By celebrities I just mean that they were famous before they flew, and thus losing one would have been impossible to cover up, thus increasing the signal.)

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#48

Post by thatoneuser »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #30
gedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this splits hairs a bit, as the Potsdam Declaration[1] already had warned of utter destruction unless Japan surrendered. Our firebomb raids had already demonstrated this resolve and killed more civilians than the atomic bombs, in likely more horrific ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration

One of the goals of the Potsdam Deceleration was to be intentionally vague about the terms of surrender, and the terms were never formally rejected. It doesn't fit the guidelines of the petition, and barely counts as an attempt at peace without bombing or invasion.

I mean it was war. Like it or not you don’t go into war negotiations with a limp hand - it’s a weak negotiating point. So I don’t think the US needed to make a hat in hand offer for it to be considered valid.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#49

Post by iguy »

herodotus wrote: post #19

> For example, one of the questions that people ask me again and again is how close the Germans were to getting an atomic bomb. The answer is, more or less, not very close at all. Why not? Because even if their scientific understanding was not too far away — which it was not, even though they were wrong about several things and behind on several others — they never came close to the stage that would be necessary to t…

Wikipedia thinks that the V2 project cost 50% more than the Manhattan project. If this is credible (and it roughly matches what I remember) then the Germans' problem wasn't that they were unable to (afford to) build factories fast enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#Assessment

I think what the article is saying is that there was an awful lot of technical knowledge between the scientific understanding (e.g. talking about what Heisenberg did or didn't know) and being able to build a factory. This knowledge the allies also didn't have at the beginning, of course.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#50

Post by moon_shots »

mikeash wrote: post #11
modelRocketry wrote: post #2

I 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…

A handful of prototype atomic bombs isn’t enough to beat the Soviet Union in a war, but one rocket to the moon is enough to beat them in space.

  As long as it worked, who cares?
That statement is a declaration of assent that you find the outcome acceptable.

It doesn’t examine the manner of resource usage, and the returned benefits for each cost.

In one case, they built a car and a garage to fix many cars in.

In the other case, they built a car off some value and drove it off a cliff. For the price, could we not have also obtained a matching garage?

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