[fulafel]

Also lots of the project ingredients were not really market commodities. There could have been a lot more exchange of money involved if eg there had been a market for weapons grade uranium/plutonium or moon rockets and staff had been paid FAANG salaries.

(There's of course a big opportunity cost in employing the best physicists and biggest r&d investments in nukes - eg solar energy and grid storage could have been here decades earlier in an alternative scenario.)