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I think the key factor is not the size, but the type of management: Apollo, SpaceX (and the Manhattan project for that matter) all had technical leadership, and

I think the key factor is not the size, but the type of management: Apollo, SpaceX (and the Manhattan project for that matter) all had technical leadership, and where headed by people who could basically have pulled the whole project off with a sufficient number of clones of themselves. ITER is under MBA/Political management. Even if the management team had all the time in the world, they could not complete the project on their own. Especially in ground-breaking projects, this makes a huge difference. With many options open, deciding on how to proceed requires cross-subsystem trade-offs and weighing many different risks and challenges against each other: things that will grind any non-technical leadership to a halt as they request piles upon piles of reports from their underlings.

henrikeh 6y ago
I don’t think it is fair to say that Apollo could have been pulled off by a few kind of people. It was a massive undertaking spanning almost all fields of science and engineering. Just read a book like _Stages to Saturn_ to see what an undertaking it was to just conceive, design, implement and _manage_ the Saturn rockets. But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.
- kaibee 6y ago
  > But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence. Maybe a bit conspiracy minded, but maybe the real purpose is to give nuclear physicists something to do, so that the brains to make nukes are still around in case we ever need to start doing that again?
  - kortex 6y ago
    This is absolutely an element at play at NIF. In fact not just the physics brains, but the experiments themselves, play a role in getting around test bans. To the point where nuke stewardship (ensuring aging warheads still will work) interferes with fusion physics.
  - Zardoz84 6y ago
    if that the case, a totemak fusion reactor it's totally unrelated to how a nuclear bomb works.

henrikeh 6y ago

I don’t think it is fair to say that Apollo could have been pulled off by a few kind of people. It was a massive undertaking spanning almost all fields of science and engineering. Just read a book like _Stages to Saturn_ to see what an undertaking it was to just conceive, design, implement and _manage_ the Saturn rockets. But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.

kaibee 6y ago
> But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence. Maybe a bit conspiracy minded, but maybe the real purpose is to give nuclear physicists something to do, so that the brains to make nukes are still around in case we ever need to start doing that again?
- kortex 6y ago
  This is absolutely an element at play at NIF. In fact not just the physics brains, but the experiments themselves, play a role in getting around test bans. To the point where nuke stewardship (ensuring aging warheads still will work) interferes with fusion physics.
- Zardoz84 6y ago
  if that the case, a totemak fusion reactor it's totally unrelated to how a nuclear bomb works.