Since this is still open…
War (and military applications) provide funding - “and funding makes this bird go up. No bucks, no Buck Rogers”.
Especially when you already are in a shooting war and suddenly some silly egghead theories don’t seem so silly anymore because there just might be the chance that the enemy turns them into weapons.
Which is exactly what happened regarding the atomic bomb.
Leó Szilárd feared the possibility of a nuclear bomb. After proving that a chain reaction is possible he feared that the Nazis would get there first. The rest is history.
As Truman said, developing the bomb was the biggest gamble ever. But the prize was far too attractive, and the US had the resources to do it. When they started the Manhattan Project, they didn’t even know which way to go regarding fissionable material - centrifuges or reactors? So they just did both, both ways worked and that way they got two types of fissionable material, enriched Uranium and Plutonium.
(Yes, I’m omitting the British effort in this, again. Peierle, Frisch, et al who made essential contributions on the theoretical side. It’s just that they didn’t have the cash.)
Sadly, it’s easier to get funding for weapons research than for everything else. That’s wrong, so write your representative today!
