Amazing read.
What struck me is just how much of the Manhattan Project was things Oppenheimer wanted to do, that no one else would do the same way. It’s the founder privilege, in a sense. From his teens, he was really into New Mexico - he wrote in his 20s, “My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.”
But they could be! Los Alamos came to be located where Los Alamos is because Oppenheimer wanted to do physics in New Mexico. Wild.