
The price of the Manhattan Project (2013) - sytelus
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-manhattan-project/
======
modelRocketry
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 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?

~~~
mabbo
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.

~~~
cee_el1234
If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !

~~~
bluedino
Not really - lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs
came out of that program. Plus all the support that goes with it.

~~~
eru
> [...] 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.

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
ianai
I think of it as the governmental make work program. It’s only been
digestible, politically, when it’s tied to this sort of project. Without it,
my home state would be severely affected.

~~~
killjoywashere
> Without it, my home state would be severely affected.

New Mexico?

[https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-
the...](https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-
government/2700/)

------
herodotus
> 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 turn it into an industrial
> production program, as opposed to just a laboratory understanding. That
> sheer fact is much more important than whether Heisenberg fully understood
> the nature of chain reactions or anything like that.

I found this article to be very interesting. The point above in particular,
for example, has parallels with the allied code-breaking efforts, which were
similarly organized primarily as an industrial operation. (The Bletchley Park
data base lists more that 10,000 people who were associated with work there
during the war). As with the Manhattan project, much is written about key
figures, like Turing and Flowers, whose contributions were of course crucial,
but the true genius of the effort was the fact that the British, and later the
Americans, created a large industrial organization for code breaking.

~~~
epberry
The industrial base, and the fact that production could continue unabated by
bombings on the American continent for years, was a deciding factor in the
war. As were the Russians repelling Hitler. My historical perspective on this
has shifted massively since first learning about the war in school. It wasn't
D-Day or the Battle of Britain or Midway. All of those battles were key wins
but the war overall was really organized and executed by tens of thousands of
typists and mid-level managers.

~~~
herodotus
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."

~~~
avn2109
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.

~~~
ethbro
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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II)

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

------
hirundo
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 destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should also
be included on the Manhattan Project's side of the ledger.

~~~
boomboomsubban
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 any other option was tried.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szil%C3%A1rd_petition](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szil%C3%A1rd_petition)

~~~
gedy
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration)

~~~
boomboomsubban
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.

~~~
jessriedel
> 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 vindictive; cease fires and truces are less
effective for ensuring the enemy doesn't rise later.) Therefore, if the
declaration was vague, this if anything would have been to _encourage_ getting
the Japanese to the bargaining table.

Wikipedia seems consistent with this:

> A major aspect relating to the Potsdam Declaration was that it was intended
> to be ambiguous. It is not clear from the document itself whether a Japanese
> government was to remain under Allied occupation or whether the occupation
> would be run by a foreign military government. In the same manner, it was
> not clear whether after the end of the occupation Japan was to include any
> territory other than the four main Japanese islands...This ambiguity was
> intentional on the part of the U.S. government in order to allow the Allies
> a free hand in running the affairs of Japan afterwards.

One can certainly criticize the US for not accepting conditional/partial
surrender as a way to avoid unnecessary deaths, but the ambiguity of the
declaration doesn't seem like the issue.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>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.

~~~
jessriedel
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](http://www.dannen.com/decision/45-07-17.html)

~~~
boomboomsubban
>It sounds like the Szilard petition wanted to incentivize Japan to surrender
by conceding to them some post-war self-determination.

This is not the case, the petition was to prevent the US from dropping a bomb
unless Japan had been given the terms of surrender and refused them. This did
not happen, and thus the situation can't be boiled down to "nuke or invasion"
as there was a third option was not tried. I'm not making any further
arguments, my positions on them are extreme and I don't want to try to
convince others of them.

------
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?

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

------
sleavey
It'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.

~~~
simplicio
I'd be interested in that as well. The US program was expensive in part
because they were trying to do it as quickly as possible, didn't know exactly
what a finished bomb would look like and basically pursued every possible
method for isotope separation at massive scale all at once.

A program that just pursued plutonium production and separation to produce
implosion devices would presumably be a lot cheaper (though still massively
expensive in absolute terms, obv).

~~~
michaelcampbell
> The US program was expensive in part because they were trying to do it as
> quickly as possible,

The US also was trying to just do it, whereas the USSR had the benefit of
stolen research.

------
Animats
This is known by everybody who's read about the Manhattan Project. The hard
problem was separating uranium isotopes. The Hiroshima bomb was a nuclear IED.
It could be built today by a good auto racing shop if they had the enriched
uranium. Even machining uranium isn't that hard. There's a how-to guide from
Union Carbide's tools unit. It takes some precautions, but not remote
manipulators or anything like what's needed for plutonium.

------
chriselles
I think the Manhattan Project is the exclamation point of what really decided
the ultimate victors of WWII:

Industrial capacity and efficiency.

What’s interesting is that German industrial capacity, despite being bombed
24/7(US daylight and British nighttime raids often in excess of 1,000 bombers)
were able to continue producing warfighting equipment in increasing record
numbers often with the use of slave labour.

Despite increased German industrial production of warfighting equipment
despite being bombed, the US strategic industrial depth ensured ultimate
victory rather than tactical prowess.

What’s interesting in Stan McChrystal’s recent book “Team of Teams” is his
mention that while 20th century conventional conflicts were about industrial
capacity and efficiency, the 21st century will likely be about adaptability.

~~~
lwansbrough
You may be interested in reading about the offset strategies employed by the
US DOD. In the 60s the US military conducted a still classified analysis
called Project Oregon Trail. Included (apparently) was a wargames exercise
which completely undermined Eisenhower's doctrine of tactical nuclear weapons
to fight a land war. Oregon Trail supposedly concluded that 20,000 tactical
nukes would be required to win in Europe.

The result of Oregon Trail appears to be what led to the second offset
strategy, which emphasizes intel, stealth, and precision guidance tech. But it
also provided information by way of a two part study by a panel of historians.
The historians studied 100 asymmetric wars throughout history, which lead to
this key insight: if a government can figure out the reason people support the
insurgents, and offer an alternative, then they would likely win. If they
cannot find the reason, or are unable to win the hearts and minds of the
people, they will likely lose. The more military force is substituted for
politics, the less likely the government would be to win. We saw this outcome
in Vietnam (and have to a certain degree seen the same in the Middle East).

I believe this insight is what has lead to the US' third offset strategy,
which is deterrence of war through overwhelming technological advantage.

The point to all this being that industrial capacity and efficiency is just
one cog in the machine. The bomb was a technological advantage. You don't need
much industrial capacity or efficiency to make one. Inevitably, the best way
to win a war is to convince the other side of your cause, and then they'll
just stop fighting.

------
RachelF
To put things into perspective, the B-29 bomber project cost around $3.2
billion dollars in 1945 dollars, half as much again as the $1.9 billion atomic
weapon.

The bomb project was expensive because they were accelerating perhaps 30 years
of normal research and development into 4 years. They did not know what would
work, so they made two different types of separation plants, and two different
types of bombs. All the clean room technology needed for the factories needed
to be developed from scratch.

With the wisdom of hindsight, the "race to the bomb" was a waste, but at the
time it seemed prudent. Then again war is waste, war is about laying waste.

~~~
InclinedPlane
They tried four different types of separation: centrifugation, thermal
diffusion, gaseous diffusion, and electromagnetic separation. Centrifugation
proved unworkable at the time and the remaining processes were used in concert
(taking the slightly enriched products of one into the feed of another) to
produce HEU.

The Manhattan Project was so expensive largely because it was a shotgun
approach to development. They tried 6 different ways to produce 3 different
possible bomb fuels and two different bomb designs. Ultimately the most
promising methods didn't work (centrifugation) but this didn't cause the
program to halt or have to rethink things, it kept chugging on everything else
running in parallel and ultimately succeeded with producing 3 different ways
of making HEU and one for making Plutonium plus a bomb design that worked for
each of the two fuels.

