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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.
by RachelF 8y ago
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 8y agoThey 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.