In the Manhattan project, there was no disagreement between the physicists, the politicians / generals, and the actual laborers who built the bomb, on what they wanted the bomb to do. They were all aligned around trying to build an object that would create the most powerful explosion possible.
Where did you learn of this?
From what I know it was the opposite, there were so many disagreements, even just among the physicists, that they decided to duplicate nearly all effort to produce two different types of nuclear device designs, the gun type and the implosion type, simultaneously.
e.g. both plutonium and uranium processing supply chains were set up at massive expense, and later environmental damage, just in case one design didn’t work.
Without commenting on whether there was in fact much agreement or disagreement among the physicists, this doesn’t sound like much evidence of disagreement. I think it’s often entirely reasonable to try two technical approaches simultaneously, even if everyone agrees that one of them is more promising.
Where did you learn of this?
From what I know it was the opposite, there were so many disagreements, even just among the physicists, that they decided to duplicate nearly all effort to produce two different types of nuclear device designs, the gun type and the implosion type, simultaneously.
e.g. both plutonium and uranium processing supply chains were set up at massive expense, and later environmental damage, just in case one design didn’t work.
Without commenting on whether there was in fact much agreement or disagreement among the physicists, this doesn’t sound like much evidence of disagreement. I think it’s often entirely reasonable to try two technical approaches simultaneously, even if everyone agrees that one of them is more promising.
You do realize setting up each supply chain alone took up well over 1% of total US GDP right?
I didn’t know that, but not a crux. This information does not make me think it was obviously unreasonable to try both approaches simultaneously.
(Downvoted for tone.)
How does this relate to the discussion Max H and Roko were having? Or the question I asked of Max H?
I don’t know, I didn’t intend it to relate to those things. It was a narrow reply to something in your comment, and I attempted to signal it as such.
(I’m not very invested in this conversation and currently intend to reply at most twice more.)
Okay then.