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Space/Science » in reply to Teasing out the oversimplification

Nuclear subsidy
Gary — (archived)

pwokenyaw said:

>it would be very interesting to get a cumulative total for
>government research subsidies on energy starting in
>World War II. My wild-assed guess is nukes get the most
>of the historical total, then coal, then all other fossil fuels,
>then hydro, with alternative energy way far behind.

Such a study would be meaningless. If nuclear energy had no weapon's potential then it would never have gotten past the level of simple university lab experiments such as what Otto Hahn did in the 1930s. Aerospace technology was in the same boat. Robert Goddard's early experiments with liquid rocket motors got exactly no where in the United States. Then Adolf Hitler got this funny idea that he could use ballistic missiles as a weapon system and pumped lots of money into their research and development. Hitler was wrong about most things but he was right about Volkswagens, autobahns and ICBMs. Funny thing about ballistic missiles and Hitler is actually his support of the technology was an incorrect decision from the standpoint of achieving victory in World War 2. A ballistic missile (V-2) is an order-of-magnitude more expensive than a cruise missile (V-1). If all the money poured into V-2s had been spent on manufacturing V-1s then there might have been a different outcome to World War 2 (the V-1s caused terrible suffering for the British). An expensive weapon like the V-2 only became useful when it carried a nucelar warhead.

Gary

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