3 ms·

I recall a post-mortem for the Superconducting Super Collider that pointed out a painful dichotomy: to build political support the contracts and suppliers had t

I recall a post-mortem for the Superconducting Super Collider that pointed out a painful dichotomy: to build political support the contracts and suppliers had to be spread across many districts and states, but because it was a high tech project it was much, much, much more sensitive to component delays and quality issues. The big takeaway: with non-challenging, small fry, projects you can play all the politics you want and still land them; challenging projects have a much stronger need to be guided by actual practical project concerns & engineering or you substantially increase the risk of failure. The Manhattan project, and the incredible post-WW2 military engineering, worked because the brains got money and control so they build to the challenge at hand. When Porky Pig has first dibs the merely 'insanely hard' becomes impossible... Alan Kay said something to the same effect about the golden age of innovation at Xerox Parc: (brains + money) - BS = profitableSurprises.

slededit 9y ago
The Manhattan project was distributed all around the country. From the pile under bleachers in Chicago, to the Hanford site in WA, the testing in the New Mexico desert, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
- bonesss 9y ago
  That's orthogonal to my point :) If engineering concerns dictate project planning, structure, and execution you're at least playing the game. Compromise is the nature of the beast, and practical realities dictate decisions. If political financing, back scratching, and pocket filling dictate the projects planning, structure, and execution: you've increased complexity and risk substantially, and the likelihood that you've made the project nigh impossible to complete rises accordingly. Fermi et al were not working in Chicago to balance the distribution of pork, IoW... Hard projects do not have the margins to allow those kinds of inefficiencies. And not to dis the military industrial complex, but that distinction is fundamental to all R&D projects. Everyone involved should have known better when this boondoggle started.

slededit 9y ago

The Manhattan project was distributed all around the country. From the pile under bleachers in Chicago, to the Hanford site in WA, the testing in the New Mexico desert, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

bonesss 9y ago
That's orthogonal to my point :) If engineering concerns dictate project planning, structure, and execution you're at least playing the game. Compromise is the nature of the beast, and practical realities dictate decisions. If political financing, back scratching, and pocket filling dictate the projects planning, structure, and execution: you've increased complexity and risk substantially, and the likelihood that you've made the project nigh impossible to complete rises accordingly. Fermi et al were not working in Chicago to balance the distribution of pork, IoW... Hard projects do not have the margins to allow those kinds of inefficiencies. And not to dis the military industrial complex, but that distinction is fundamental to all R&D projects. Everyone involved should have known better when this boondoggle started.