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The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

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Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#61

Post by maxxxxx »

mabbo wrote: post #4
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…

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.

I think NASA spent a lot of money on figuring out what works and what doesn't work. They probably could have done it much cheaper but SpaceX certainly had a very good blueprint to start from and didn't have to figure out everything from scratch.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#62

Post by latchkey »

dTal wrote: post #56
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…

My takeaway is that people don't have a very good sense of scale on government spending. Manhattan project: 30 billion (2012 dollars) Apollo program: 83 billion (2005 dollars) Shuttle program: 196 billion (2011 dollars) 2008 bailouts: 700 billion (2008 dollars) Iraq war: over 1 trillion dollars That's right, both the Iraq war and the 2008 bailouts each dwarf the entire space program. Yet which thing attracts more han…

Yearly US defense budget is increasing to 750 billion (2018 dollars).

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/trump-mattis-def...

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#63

Post by Lapsed »

ncmncm wrote: post #43

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?

The entries on the table for K-25 through S-50 are included in the Oak ridge total.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#64

Post by ethbro »

iguy wrote: post #49
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.…

Also, as the article points out, it's really hard to write exciting books about achieving incredibly tight tolerances in manufacturing.

And engineers tend to be less colorfully interesting than physicists. (No offense intended, I'd include myself in this characterization)

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#65

Post by ethbro »

avn2109 wrote: post #51
herodotus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could remember the exact quote, but in the diary of a German soldier fighting on in France he said something like "For every Krupp shell we sent to the Americans, they sent a hundred Detroit shells back."

In "The Rommel Papers," (which is incidentally a really splendid book that you should definitely read if you have any interest in tactics at all), Rommel himself claims that the ratio was in practice closer to 500:1 in the African theater.

Extend to many things.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, the US produced more M4 chassis (all vehicle types) in 1943-alone (21,231, admittedly a huge surge in yoy production) [1] than Germany produced of any single chassis type during the whole war (most numerous: Pz III at 15,747 total) [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_armored_fighting_ve...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehi...

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#66

Post by mac01021 »

dTal wrote: post #56
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…

My takeaway is that people don't have a very good sense of scale on government spending. Manhattan project: 30 billion (2012 dollars) Apollo program: 83 billion (2005 dollars) Shuttle program: 196 billion (2011 dollars) 2008 bailouts: 700 billion (2008 dollars) Iraq war: over 1 trillion dollars That's right, both the Iraq war and the 2008 bailouts each dwarf the entire space program. Yet which thing attracts more han…

Anecdotally, I hear a lot more complaints about the bailouts and the war than I do about anything related to NASA.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#67

Post by boomboomsubban »

jessriedel wrote: post #40
boomboomsubban wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> One of the goals of the Potsdam Deceleration was to be intentionally vague about the terms of surrender Do you have a cite that the ambiguity was intended to reduce the chance the Japanese would surrender? I don't know the history well. I have the impression that, given the US's knowledge of its own military superiority, it would never have accepted anything besides total surrender and occupation. (This is not just…

>Do you have a cite that the ambiguity was intended to reduce the chance the Japanese would surrender? I don't know the history well.

If fairly clearly shows that they were not listening to the requests made in the Szilard petition, which is what I am claiming. They did not publicly offer the terms of surrender or wait for a refusal.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#68

Post by Tsubasachan »

iguy wrote: post #49
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.…

Keep in mind that the Germans didn't have access to many resources. The allies had Africa, the Middle East and South America to supply them with all they needed.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#69

Post by Tsubasachan »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #16
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…

In July of 1945, Szilard and a number of other scientists involved with the Manhattan Project, signed a petition asking that Japan be publicly informed of the terms of surrender and refused then before the bomb was dropped. Not only was that simple request ignored, the US Government tried to blacklist the scientists who signed that petition. Arguing that the bombs were necessary to prevent an invasion pretends that a…

People make the mistake that the Japanese government actually CARED about the suffering of its people. Japanese cities were already being bombed daily and Japan was starving. The war had been lost for years.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#70

Post by jessriedel »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #67
jessriedel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the goals of the Potsdam Deceleration was to be intentionally vague about the terms of surrender Do you have a cite that the ambiguity was intended to reduce the chance the Japanese would surrender? I don't know the history well. I have the impression that, given the US's knowledge of its own military superiority, it would never have accepted anything besides total surrender and occupation. (This is not just…

>Do you have a cite that the ambiguity was intended to reduce the chance the Japanese would surrender? I don't know the history well. If fairly clearly shows that they were not listening to the requests made in the Szilard petition, which is what I am claiming. They did not publicly offer the terms of surrender or wait for a refusal.

Oh, OK, sure. It sounds like the Szilard petition wanted to incentivize Japan to surrender by conceding to them some post-war self-determination. The US would not accept this -- which, I as I said, might have been immoral -- so, to me, the ambiguity of the surrender terms in the Potsdam Declaration is not really surprising or damning. If we can trust Wikipedia, Japan declined surrender even after the first bomb on Hiroshima in the hopes of striking better terms with the USSR.

For others, here are the relevant excerpts from the Szilard petition, which is quite short and worth reading in full:

> We feel, however, that such attacks on Japan could not be justified, at least not unless the terms which will be imposed after the war on Japan were made public in detail and Japan were given an opportunity to surrender....If such public announcement gave assurance to the Japanese that they could look forward to a life devoted to peaceful pursuits in their homeland and if Japan still refused to surrender our nation might then, in certain circumstances, find itself forced to resort to the use of atomic bombs....we, the undersigned, respectfully petition: first, that you exercise your power as Commander-in-Chief, to rule that the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender; ...

http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-17.html

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