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Cost of the Manhattan project in 2012 US dollars: 30 Trillion http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-m...

This was a significant part of GDP and please also consider that the US had a much smaller population to bear the costs.

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I think you mean 30 billion. The entire GDP of the US is only 16.77 trillion and the entire revenue of the US government is only a fraction of that. Both the Apollo project and Manhattan project were around .4% of the GDP. A lot for a single project, but not what I would consider a "significant part". Social Security is an order of magnitude greater.

Ah. Yes. Billions.

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