A-bomb history

[cbelt3]

I works with a number of WWII vets in the defense industry. And one guy who worked on the instrumentation team on the Manhattan project. Highly intelligent highly motivated people.

[ztirffritz]

Malcolm Gladwell did a TED talk about the Norden Bombsight.
https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwe...anguage=en

Ombligo wrote:
The $2B spent on the Manhatten project was the second most expensive program as the development of the B-29 bomber ran close to $3B. In a close third, the Norden bombsight cost $1.5B. Those are all 1945 dollars, today that would be $31B (Manhatten) , $47B (B29) and $24B (Norden) or $101B total - the cost of a single B1 bomber (half the projected cost of the B21 or ten F35 fighters.

All three were instrumental in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Lux Interior]

pdq wrote:
Just curious - does it have a Richard Feynman character in it?

Surely You're Joking?

[Mr Downtown]

In part because my best friend from high school went to work at Los Alamos, and I later mapped the town, I've long been intrigued by the "secret city up on the mesa." There's a local-history photo book they sell at the Bradbury Museum, and Peter Hales's book Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project, which is a nationwide, scholarly overview of the three atomic towns (Los Alamos, Hanford, and Oak Ridge). As it happens, just this week I'm finishing Jennet Conant's 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, a somewhat more personal memoir of Los Alamos based on the journals of Dorothy McKibbin, Oppenheimer's executive secretary based in Santa Fe.

[pdq]

Lux Interior wrote:
[quote=pdq]
Just curious - does it have a Richard Feynman character in it?

Surely You're Joking?
Oddly enough, I had never even heard of Feynman until some years back I joined a science book club and they included that book as a free bonus.

What a character.