No World War I. Who gets the Atomic bomb?
- Thread starter kernals12
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Not sure what you are referring to. Parsons had a lengthly engineering task designing the detonator system but it was a straight forward task. Similarly Sizlaird & the others arrived at the multiple core/impact or convergence design after long hours with the slide rules & lab bench tests. But the detonator tests had relatively few problems & the Trinity test & the Fat Man devices both worked correctly first time.
They usually are. Its a interesting subject, and fueled by bad information from the History Channel & like sources.
It took them quite a while to get the plutonium bomb to detonate they had to be instantaneously have an explosion that would implode the core and if it wasn't done simultaneously on all of them would be a dud.
I'd recommend Rhodes 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' It has several chapters on how the implosion design and detonator mechanics were worked out. Like I wrote, the tests were relatively error free, probably because the engineers like Parsons & the physicists Sizlaird were the top men in their categories. The complexity meant it took months to do he math and technical work, but once the base requirements were worked out it was fairly straight forward. After Fermis experiments proved and clarified the hypotheticals both bomb projects were fast tracked through in barely three years. Much of that was building production plants for the fissile material, the Uranium and Plutonium.
basic nuclear research such as the US first two atomic bombs would not need massive nuclear reactors like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl developing basic atomic bombs would not be that much of a problem after they figured out how to do. to answer the question who gets the bomb first Germany is the clear leader in it they have the resources and the people the British and the French are also strong contenders though.
It's interesting that the USN had the Mk 14 torpedo problem at the same time as the bomb project. They even had Einstein work on the topredo problem at $25 a day consulting rates - the Navy rejected his advice.
It's interesting that the USN had the Mk 14 torpedo problem at the same time as the bomb project. They even had Einstein work on the topredo problem at $25 a day consulting rates - the Navy rejected his advice.
Actually the torpedo problem went back over a decade, it was not recognized as a problem until 1942-43. In that case development was underfunded and testing was reduced to fit Depression era budgets. Lab bench tests were inadequate and field tests were worse.
Hedging my bets in case someone feels the need to point out if/that more parts
than those generally/specifically associated with the term was affected.
And, your point is...?
That the coinciding dust bowl was not why the Depression was more severe in the United States?
That you feel the answer "the United States had the dust bowl on top of the Depression" to be
an insufficiently detailed answer?
That without WW1 there would have been neither Depression nor dust bowl, or at least wouldn't have been as severe?
Other?
BlondieBC
Banned
Largely agreed.
I suspect, but can't prove, it is less than 10%. Just go to general project management. A rushed, panic start to any project can jump the costs by multiple, not percentages. So if one starts a 50 story building in small town America, use only workers who have never built a building above one story tall, start building without blue prints, build two buildings because one or the other design does not work, you could easily spend enough to build ten 50 story building if done with experience workers on a reasonable time frame. And we should also note that they were designing a program not to have a few bombs produced per year (likely ITTL), but trying to build a massive program to spam the bomb. I would guess the real cost of a program ITTL is about 5% of OTL costs. So the two billion USD spent is much more like 100 million USD (1 Iowa Class Battleship). Now spread that out over 10 years, and we get an average cost of 10 million per year for a few bombs. (Probably about a DD per year).
And the risk is much lower than OTL. The research cost will be well under 1 million USD per year when at the university stage, and this number will be buried in many budgets. By the time to proceed with the program decision is made, there will be enough plutonium lying around for a handful of bombs, the science is understood, and we are mostly dealing with engineer issues associated with production and delivery of the bomb.
And I left something out since it has been so long since we had a series of threads. Radium. There actually was a radium bubble right about the time WW1 started. We had discovered chemotherapy and were using radium. There are projections in the NY Times that radium mines will be more valuable than all the gold mines of the world. And these mines had mining trailings consider a waste product. We call these waste product uranium ore. Yes, they were mining uranium deposits for radium. So it is such a smooth process to commercial reactors.
- Year X. Element 94 picked up by atomic spectrometer.
- Year X to X +2. Followup research confirms.
- Year X+2, someone tries to get rich buy building a small uranium pile. You are doing the modern dream of alchemist, making something more valuable than gold. Of course their may be accidents. You will have to cool the pile. It may be messy extracting the shorter lived radioactive elements. The reactor is likely small, since you can get rich with very small amounts of "super gold" production. Seems like this stuff was worth at least 100 times the value of gold per ounce, but be careful with that number since it is memory.
- Year X+3, Copy cats enter area to get rich.
- Year X+4, I have most of the stuff needed for commercial reactor. The missing parts are mostly the engineering required to hook it up to the turbines.
I hope this highlights a bit more why the program is so cheap ITTL. When the go decision is made by some government, all the tech will exist to extract the pure plutonium. The physics will be well understood, probably highlight by a few nice size accidents. It will be just he weaponization that will need to be done, and this will be of modest cost compared to a Great Powers budget.
The main reason I write so much on this topic is that it would be a great timeline to read. Just a lot of work to do well. Anyone can get the bomb. You can have something like in here where WW1 is avoid. Or with a well constructed POD, you can have OTL WW2. The key is not getting the initial discover of element 94 which can be done in any year after about 1920. It is getting the follow up experiments to confirm. Scientist today still argue if the experiment actually detected element 94, but it was of the type that could. And followup research would have figure out why the extra heat was being produced. The key is the confirmation experiments of Element 94 QUICKLY followed by someone trying to produce small amounts at universities. What I call a research reactor.
So often, the predecessor tech is there, just no one puts it all together. Radar was tested in harbors in Germany prewar, then forgotten. Twenty years lost. The same with guided glide weapons. At least a couple decades lost. Then someone intentionally or unintentionally funds the project.
It would definitely be less severe. There won't be a massive increase in the amount of acreage put into wheat and farmers won't stretch themselves so thin having not overinvested in the wheat crop. There's still going to be a drought, but a drought without the Depression leaves a lot more options to farmers in terms of secondary work.
Southern Alberta had a huge drought from 1919-26 and while it was very much a regional disaster the problem as a whole wasn't insurmountable and didn't cause the massive loss and hoplessness of the one that followed five years later. I imagine the Dust Bowl would be much the same.
The USN started a atomic power R & D program in 1939. Intially just collecting and collating current research docs on the subject, with a budget of $1,500 for 1939. When the Manhatten Project was initiated the Navy research project had grown to a lab at the Philidelphia Navy Yard studying refining of radio actives, and extraction of isotopes, the USN R & D was rolled into the Manhatten Project & it was another 5-6 years before the Navy regained control of its own atomic power plant development.