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Yeah, the economics question is a good one, and economics was likely a factor, but I don't think it's entirely straight forward. I mean, the Manhattan Project happened at the cost of $2 billion and some three years. It might have been cheaper to keep firebombing, I don't know. I think if you consider the economics behind it, it was more of a question of having spent the money only to have it come to naught.
In a way it's like asking, "Why did we go to the moon?" And I think there are a number of reasons. Going back to the "display of power" argument, and now tie into it the "because we want to know if we can" and the "we want to be the first ones to do it" arguments.
Maybe it was mostly a push to debut the use of atomic weapons before anyone else did.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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