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Yeah people don't rush to say "don't waste money on this dead end" but think about it for a moment.

A 500B dollar investment doesn't just fall into one's lap. It's not your run of the mill funding round. No, this is something you very actively work towards that your funders must be really damn convinced is worth the gamble. No one sane is going to look at what they genuinely believe to be a dead end and try to garner up Manhattan Project scales of investment. Careers have been nuked for far less.

The Manhattan project cost only $2 billion (about $30 billion adjusting for inflation to today).
It would probably be more reasonable to adjust for US GDP. That would put $2 billion back then at around the same as $250 billion today. So only about 2x off.
We're talking about Masayoshi Son here lol.