alt Hacker NewsWe are stretching the metaphor thin, but surely the progress towards an atomic bomb was not measured only in uranium production, in the same way that the progress towards a QC is not measured only in construction time of the machine.
At the theory level, there were only theories, then a few breakthroughs, then some linear production time, then a big boom.
> Something doesn't add up here.
Please consider it might be your (and my) lack of expertise in the specific sub-field. (I do realize I am saying this on Hacker News.)
Not only, but a huge challenge was manufacturing enough fuel and was the real limiting part. They were working out hard science and engineering but more fuel definitely == bigger bomb in a very real way and it is quite linear because E=mc^2. And it was in many ways the bottleneck for the bombs - it literally guided how big they made the first bomb and the US manufactured enough for 3 - 1 test, 2 to drop