It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at them; some science experiments just seem to progress frustratingly slowly, while others steam ahead with alarming stealth. Take the Manhattan Project, which culminated in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The origins of this particular R&D sprint, as opposed to marathon, date back to 1938 when two German chemists discovered nuclear fission. Fearing that a German team might win the race to develop a weapon that would change the face of modern warfare, the Manhattan Project was initiated in 1939. Led by the US, with the support of the UK and Canada, the project started small but grew rapidly to employ over 130,000 people at more than 30 research and production sites across the participating nations.
Despite the then scant knowledge surrounding fissile uranium-235 and the fact that plutonium was only discovered in 1940, the first nuclear weapon detonation test went ahead in July 1945. Less than a month later, two Boeing B-29s dropped atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 100,000 people immediately and injuring a further 130,000, effectively bringing World War II to an end. Just seven years before the nightmare that unfolded in Japan, atomic power was only a dream.
* All costs calculated in 2017 $US
