[X] Chien-Shiung Wu
[X] Woman
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
[x] David Weiss
[x] Man
[x] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
QM's burned on spicy topics and there's already a USSR number go up quest that will eventually cover this part anyways.
...but Weiss is a German name and there just so happens to be many postwar scientists with Germanic names in America who speak German as if they were born there.
...but Weiss is a German name and there just so happens to be many postwar scientists with Germanic names in America who speak German as if they were born there.
[x] David Weiss
[x] Man
[x] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
[X] Ivanka Nabokov
[X] Woman
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
Female scientist in the US? Hard mode? Not unless they're also Russian!
[x] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
It's very possible that David Weiss may have lived in Germany, but did not come to America after the War -- instead, he might have fled Europe early.
In that case, he may have been Jewish, or had Jewish family members with whom he chose to flee -- but he would be in good company, and may have connections to the rest of the emigre intellectual community.
[x] David Weiss
[x] Man
[x] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
[x] Cave Johnson
[x] Man
[x] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
[X] Ivan Nabokov
[X] Man
[X]Soviet Union: The Union is heavily damaged by the war and therefore not in any position to splurge on bleeding edge technology. Your task would be to outcompete the other national labs on the core fields of nuclear science and rocketry, dealing in specific components if need be. You might focus on reactor core designs, or missile telemetry or other similar specialist fields. But you will have to succeed, for the resources are scarce.
[X] Woman
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
[X] David Weiss
[X] Man
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it.
Ah, the US of A, the land of the free... flows of capital to our grant budgets let's not suffer Soviet R&D when we could instead perch on the cutting edge for once, eh?
[X] David Weiss
[X] Man
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it
IN THE LAND OF THE FREE THE BUDGET FLOWS LIKE WINE!!
[X] David Weiss
[X] Man
[X] The United States: The U.S. is a place that has money and the will to spend it. That means more competition and a lack of direct government contracts as in the USSR – you will instead be working with private corporations to commercialize what IP you have and as contracted researchers. A failure can be made up for since projects and funding are plentiful, but you will have to deal with bleeding edge science and the personalities that come with it
July, 1952
Washington D.C.
Washington DC is hot and muggy in summer, and you can already feel the slight prickling of sweat under your suit-jacket as the Capitol Building looms at the end of the National Mall. Throngs of tourists and visitors to the nation's capital are seen from afar, your eyes picking out everyone from sober-suited Senators to gawking tourists from the Pacific Coast. You're not bound for the Mall or for Congress, though. Your steps trace out a well-traveled path past the federal offices that Roosevelt built, to the Department of Defense where the scientist that you're to meet awaits.
You're guided past the guarded doors to a dingy office in what used to be the War Department before the new Pentagon took on that role. There's a great flat polished wooden desk here, the elegant office furniture jarringly out of place in the office. Behind the desk is the government's 'consultant', the one that you've been pitching the idea to for weeks.
Another national laboratory system, another little fiefdom where you can do work of significance on the government's dime.
"Something to drink, David?" The old man's jowly face smiles up at you as you take a seat, hat hung on the hooks behind the door as you close it. "I've only got water and brandy, but that's good enough for now."
"Budget cuts, then?" You take a moment to settle into your chair, the office seeming small with the expanse of furniture and filing cabinets clustering around the walls like great gray steel limpets. The scientist across from you laughs nervously, waving a hand as if to dismiss such plebian concerns.
He ducks his head a little before speaking, the lightbulb above in the windowless office shining off thickly gelled hair. "Nothing as yet, David. Nothing yet. But you know how things are. New administration, new priorities. They already want to shift more money to Korea and cut back on any and all of my department's work."
"I wasn't aware you ran a department."
"Funny man," he says with a sardonic smile, "You know what I'm talking about, and so do those timid farts at the Atomic Energy Commission." He suddenly pulls a drawer open in a great rattling of disorganized contents, fat finger fumbling for a cigarette case and a lighter. A questioning look in your direction gets a shake of the head – you'd prefer he didn't smoke – and he shrugs. "Fair enough, if you don't want one more for me." A light flares and smoke curls lazily up to the roof before the man speaks again, bright eyes pinning you to your chair. "We're not here to talk about my business or my work with Ulam, David. We're here about your little proposal and the response to it."
You don't say anything about the cigarette, shifting a little in your chair before answering. He's always been a bit of a bastard. Smart, driven, brilliant even. With all the casual disregard of that breed. "The response from you or the response from Dr. Bush?"
"Vannevar Bush is too occupied with his precious science foundation to be bothered with the small details. He took one look at your little idea and called it a decent one, but a limited one." Ash is gently tapped out into a cigarette case – made from a shell's base, by the look of it – and the sonorous voice of a professor trained for the university's halls drones on. "No, the one that you're going to be dealing with is me."
"And your response?"
"Positive." He smiles briefly at you, brief amusement at having dragged that much reaction out of you here in the dingy office where he's been put by the War Department. "I've already floated it. There's a decent group at Berkeley. Good engineers in California. I've been meaning to set up a retirement plan that side of the continent."
The old man's faint Hungarian accent flavors his words with a mocking edge. Or that could just be the scientist famous for his abrasive nature shining through. You swallow for a moment as the smoke trails to the ceiling vents, choosing your words carefully. "One group won't change that much. One more lab is not the solution. You want to remake what we had back in the war? You're not getting that. You're not getting the talent, the money or the secrecy."
"I know that, David. What's your point?"
"You want to do the research on the cheap, you want to have your defense sector fief, you want to avoid the Presidency shutting down everything you have a hand in." Your bluntness gets a sharp look, the old man glaring at you from across his desk. "What I'm saying is give me a lab. I have the plans, you know as well as I do that Bush was onside as long as it didn't touch his precious Science Foundation funding stream, and we have enough connections."
He snorts, dismissive. The old scientist's manner is that of an examiner testing a student, a doctoral board advising on a thesis. "What makes you so sure that you're the one to lead it? I can ask any of the other big names?"
"Who?" You raise an eyebrow skeptically, "I have the industry connections even if I wasn't in your little show at Los Alamos. Who else can you call? Oppenheimer, the pacifist? Einstein, who doesn't want to build death? Goddard, who wants to play with his rockets?"
There's a dull thud as the older scientist suddenly slams a hand on the table, ashing out his cigarette with far more force than necessary. The other members of the Los Alamos fraternity have always been a sore spot with him. "Mm. Maybe. All the same. Your request has been provisionally approved by order of the Department of Defense. And by me." The stare that he gives you across the table is crystal clear. No more fencing. You owe him.
You nod.
He continues after that, "You have just two questions to answer, and then we're moving ahead with things. You'd better get results, David." From across the table, Edward Teller's quiet threat just gets a single nod. You'd expected this much.
What will be your agency? []A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you. -[]Write in Name: QM Veto applies to insane choices or excessively meme choices
Competition: You're the newcomer on the block and with fewer significant connections than most. That means you have more trouble selling your stuff to the military and to the corporations that fund this sort of speculative work, and you have more trouble finding good researchers to act as department heads. Because of the competition poaching your talent and your lack of contacts taking its toll, things will be harder.
Independence: You will have more freedom to tailor your work to the contacts that you made in industry back in wartime and also to tailor work to what you like. That means a willingness to do more to succeed, because at this point you'll like your work. Less stress gained from working long hours, choose more industry connections in the next update. A small lab like yours will be able to specialize in what you prefer. More granularity and customization of designs.
The Old Man's Eye: Teller seems amused when you tell him your plans, and there's an impish gleam in his eye when he hands you his card. Contact me later he says, and you're pretty sure that means you have at least one friend on Capitol Hill.
[]Lincoln Labs: MIT has come in late to the game but with a vengeance, blowing a lot of endowment money and talent on setting up a laboratory. Given that the Institute is a place with friends in high places, you're not going to be heading Lincoln Labs, but the Defense Research Section is a place to start from at least.
Labor Pool: There's a near-endless pool of cheap labor here, from the graduate students that come to MIT. That makes recruitment easier at the cost of having to deal with the occasional graduate student screwing the pooch now and then. Explosively.
Foundational Work: You will not be delivering manufacturing templates and designs ready for mass production, what you will do is more foundational work that will be piggybacked on by others. That means turnkey research or fundamental R&D with smaller teams on a smaller scale. Which is brutal, especially on the stress side of things. More stress gain, more foundational research work, less manufacturing or design-for-manufacturability work.
Friends in High Places: There are plenty of alums on Capitol Hill or who have contacts on Capitol Hill, and those friends can make sure that you get what you need. A few times, at least. You don't need to make it perfect here, just good enough. That also means more civilian focused work can be done despite the name of your department – you just need to sell it as defense related enough.
[]Livermore Labs: Teller's retirement project with Livermore, run by one of old Livermore's grad students and home to the premier nuclear research establishment in the United States. You again will not be the head of the lab due to the sheer scale of the enterprise, but you can head up what Director York is calling the Applied Reactor Systems group. That is code for 'reactor safety and everything else that isn't the Bomb'.
Restricted Areas: The lab has a tight focus and a defined funding stream, and you'll be locked into a more restricted path of research and development here. That means no angling for work that you like, you'll take what you get and deal with it while the glamorous work of the Bomb is done elsewhere.
Teller's Eye: This is Teller's retirement project. That means if he brings you on board, you don't screw up and make him look bad. That means you will be bound to get him results.
Livermore: The lab has the finest scientists and the best funding stream in the nation, backed by the Atomic Energy Commission as it is. That means that you're not going to be worrying about recruitment and money all that much. As long as you deliver what you're given, in some form or another.
[]The Joint Venture: Honeywell and Westinghouse have come to an interesting agreement after some prodding from Teller. With significant looks cast in the direction of IBM and the Atomic Energy Commission's proposal for nationalized reactor design, Teller and you have managed to get them to pool resources for an R&D consortium focused on nuclear science and electronics. And Honeywell being Honeywell, aerospace to some degree.
Private Sector Labs: You will not worry about selling your product, you have two defined customers who will take what you can give in the areas that they want you to work. That means working in a very broad but strictly defined area to produce usable IP, and faster than the competition can. Talent is on-call, funding is contingent on success, and you'll need good luck. Projects are limited in scope and area to some degree, less issues in selling your IP due to defined customers already. Honeywell and Westinghouse have right of first refusal on all side projects.
Consortium Building: Teller has already mentioned talking to other organizations to build a private equivalent to Vannevar Bush's NSF. It'll never be of the same scale and of the same significance, but you can surely pitch this to other companies once you get to a significant size. And that means you can grow.
Oooh, exciting. They are all really interesting choices here. I'm sort of thinking it might be rather interesting to go for like, setting up our own lab and see if we can either succeed or not on this, but if not that, then the Lincoln or Lawrence Labs could be rather interesting to go for, especially that of Lawrence considering well, it has to do with the bomb and the AEC.
[X] A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you.
-[X] Weiss Technologies
Because if we are forming an initial company, why not name it after ourselves (and potentially anyone else major who's involved).
[X]A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you.
-[X]Grey Iron Inc.
A very friendly sounding corporate name.
[X]The Joint Venture: Honeywell and Westinghouse have come to an interesting agreement after some prodding from Teller. With significant looks cast in the direction of IBM and the Atomic Energy Commission's proposal for nationalized reactor design, Teller and you have managed to get them to pool resources for an R&D consortium focused on nuclear science and electronics. And Honeywell being Honeywell, aerospace to some degree.
While challenging to be sure, an established income stream seems very useful to start with. Couple that with a rather broard area of focus and we could be in for one hell of a ride.
[X]The Joint Venture: Honeywell and Westinghouse have come to an interesting agreement after some prodding from Teller. With significant looks cast in the direction of IBM and the Atomic Energy Commission's proposal for nationalized reactor design, Teller and you have managed to get them to pool resources for an R&D consortium focused on nuclear science and electronics. And Honeywell being Honeywell, aerospace to some degree.
[X]The Joint Venture: Honeywell and Westinghouse have come to an interesting agreement after some prodding from Teller. With significant looks cast in the direction of IBM and the Atomic Energy Commission's proposal for nationalized reactor design, Teller and you have managed to get them to pool resources for an R&D consortium focused on nuclear science and electronics. And Honeywell being Honeywell, aerospace to some degree.
[X]The Joint Venture: Honeywell and Westinghouse have come to an interesting agreement after some prodding from Teller. With significant looks cast in the direction of IBM and the Atomic Energy Commission's proposal for nationalized reactor design, Teller and you have managed to get them to pool resources for an R&D consortium focused on nuclear science and electronics. And Honeywell being Honeywell, aerospace to some degree.
[X] A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you.
-[X] Weiss Technologies
[X] A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you.
-[X] Weiss Technologies
[X] A New One: Edward Teller has backed you up on this as long as you deliver, and you'd prefer not to be beholden to the old men of the universities as you set up the new model military-research-industrial complex. That means leveraging what connections you have in industry and turning out product rapidly to make a name for yourself, but at the same time means that you have more freedom in choosing what to work with. Of course, this will be a finger in the eye for the competition, some of whom hoped to recruit you.
-[X] Weiss Technologies
