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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 ma

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !
  - bluedino 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      > [...] 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 8y ago
        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 8y ago
        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 8y ago
        > Without it, my home state would be severely affected. New Mexico? https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
        derangedHorse 8y ago
        The economy isn’t “out 50k of labor”, the government is saving 50k that it could use to pay someone else who wants to work at wherever their headquarter is.
        Retric 8y ago
  - lisper 8y ago
    As someone who worked for NASA for 15 years I can tell you this is absolutely true.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  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.
mikeash 8y ago
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.
- moon_shots 8y ago
  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?
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Why are you “quoting” something I didn’t write and then claiming it means I find the outcome acceptable?
matthewdgreen 8y ago
These programs did lead to an assembly line that created thousands of very powerful rockets and the infrastructure to launch them. They just weren’t used for space flight.
mtreis86 8y ago
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.
- iguy 8y ago
  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.)
dTal 8y ago
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 hand wringing about costs? Which things require years of tiresome political wrangling, and which happened at the snap of a finger?
- latchkey 8y ago
  Yearly US defense budget is increasing to 750 billion (2018 dollars). https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/trump-mattis-defense-spending/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/trump-mattis-def...
  - dTal 8y ago
    Another good one: total money spent by the US on fusion research, ever: 37.6 billion (2005 dollars). It really puts into perspective how many things commonly held to be incredibly difficult, or expensive, are in fact simply not a priority. Almost any pie-in-the-sky technological project or public works project you can think of utterly pales next to the money that is casually spent on dubious causes like propping up broken financial systems and destabilizing foreign countries. Maybe we should stop using "Manhattan Project" or "moonshot" to refer to huge, ambitious practically unfundable government works, when they're so cheap in the scheme of things. Maybe we should speak of "bailouts" instead.
- mac01021 8y ago
  Anecdotally, I hear a lot more complaints about the bailouts and the war than I do about anything related to NASA.

mabbo 8y ago

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 8y ago
If this is as true as it sounds - holy cow that's so sad !
- bluedino 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    > [...] 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 8y ago
      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 8y ago
        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 8y ago
        > Without it, my home state would be severely affected. New Mexico? https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
      - derangedHorse 8y ago
        The economy isn’t “out 50k of labor”, the government is saving 50k that it could use to pay someone else who wants to work at wherever their headquarter is.
        Retric 8y ago
- lisper 8y ago
  As someone who worked for NASA for 15 years I can tell you this is absolutely true.
maxxxxx 8y ago
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.

mikeash 8y ago

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.

moon_shots 8y ago
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?
- mikeash 8y ago
  Why are you “quoting” something I didn’t write and then claiming it means I find the outcome acceptable?

matthewdgreen 8y ago

These programs did lead to an assembly line that created thousands of very powerful rockets and the infrastructure to launch them. They just weren’t used for space flight.

mtreis86 8y ago

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.

iguy 8y ago
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.)

dTal 8y ago

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 hand wringing about costs? Which things require years of tiresome political wrangling, and which happened at the snap of a finger?

latchkey 8y ago
Yearly US defense budget is increasing to 750 billion (2018 dollars). https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/trump-mattis-defense-spending/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/trump-mattis-def...
- dTal 8y ago
  Another good one: total money spent by the US on fusion research, ever: 37.6 billion (2005 dollars). It really puts into perspective how many things commonly held to be incredibly difficult, or expensive, are in fact simply not a priority. Almost any pie-in-the-sky technological project or public works project you can think of utterly pales next to the money that is casually spent on dubious causes like propping up broken financial systems and destabilizing foreign countries. Maybe we should stop using "Manhattan Project" or "moonshot" to refer to huge, ambitious practically unfundable government works, when they're so cheap in the scheme of things. Maybe we should speak of "bailouts" instead.
mac01021 8y ago
Anecdotally, I hear a lot more complaints about the bailouts and the war than I do about anything related to NASA.