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Could The Moon Power Earth?
Gatton writes: "Cool article at [Space.com which says that Helium-3 is] found on the moon in great abundance. Combined with fusion, it could be a clean alternate fuel source. Quote from article: "Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt." The article is a bit breathless and mumbly on details (So how do we fill up our tanks with H-3, exactly?), but tantalizing. And "combined with fusion," wouldn't a whole lot of things be interesting? Still, if the energy is feasibly recoverable, expect a different kind of corporate-sponsored moonshots.
Actually, all EME (earth-moon-earth) work is done at 2 meters and above (144MHz and above), not in the HF bands (generally taken to be 50MHz and below). HF bounces off the ionosphere, not the moon.
As for beaming power to/from the moon: it will spread, and the beamwidth from the moon would be roughly the size of the earth. You'd have to cover the whole earth with antennas and diodes to recover the power. It'd make more sense to put the collectors in low earth orbit: the beamwidths then would be roughly football field sized. However, the stupid environmentalists (as opposed to the more common but less vocal smart environmentalists) scream because there's "radiation" involved.
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a) Fusion don't work yet.
b) The shuttle can't go to the moon and back.
Other than that... sure, great idea!
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
Now, I agree with you on this one, but I'm glad you added the "seems to be" part. Therin lies the whole problem. We have a bit of a weakness for thinking we understand what we really don't. A key example of this is what is going on in the fields of North America with genetically engineered crops. Plants that looked completely benign and super-l33t in the lab are passing genes off to wild plants, letting fieldside weeds acquire resistance to Roundup and all those other brand-name herbicides.
Monarch butterflies are dying from the BT-pesticide-enhanced canola pollen, not from eating it directly, (which monarchs don't do), but from the pollen being blown onto milkweed plants which feeds migrating butterflies. Who would have seen that one happening? Nobody.
The caution that I would just like to voice is that "resources" aren't always "just sitting there waiting for us". Extracting oil from the ground is pretty much okay, except for what we do with it once we get it out, and sucking hydrogen off the moon would probably be okay too (supposing we found a way). But often, what we view as a resource "just sitting there" is actually doing a lot for us! Take trees in a river valley for example. Cut them down and you flood the river with silt from rain runoff and kill the fish. Seems obvious now, but nobody said anything until the 80's.
There's no money in sitting back and saying "Things are pretty good now, let's just figure out how we can fix some of our mistakes and maybe stop exploiting the third world". There -is- money in the latest miracle drug/product/crop/sodee pop. Yay capitalism.
Wah!
Went to a restaurant the other day. There was all this food on the buffet and the first thing I thought was I'll bet that food is there for a reason. I went hungry that day, not wanting to upset the delicate equilibrium of the restaurant environment and contented myself by soaking in the ambiance.
carlos
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
(p+d -> 3He + gamma): aw bugger, the energy runs away as light. (p+t -> 4He + gamma) bugger again.
A couple of points here - First of all, if the many metres of shielding around your reactor absorb a substantial fraction of these gamma rays (and they'd better for the sake of the technicians), you can just run a heat engine off of it the way you do with a fission reactor.
Secondly, even if gamma rays aren't reclaimed and a lot of your energy escapes, this still looks a lot more mass-efficient than chemical energy sources - and we have a near-limitless supply of hydrogen and deuterium.
(d+d -> 3He+n or p+t) nice idea, but notice that neutron... (d+t -> 4He + n) this is an easy to produce reaction, but notice the neutron again. (t+t -> 4He +n+n) argh, two neutrons now.
And the problem with this is?
This would make fusion reactors as impractical as energy sources as fission reactors are now - which is to say, perfectly usable if you put in the required safety effort. And again, with a fuel supply that will last forever.
In principle, you could also run forever (or at least thousands of years) with breeder fission reactors taking in thorium and with reprocessing of spent fuel rods, but even "dirty" fusion is far preferable from a waste standpoint (only low-level waste produced, and no need to chemically reprocess it).
Still don't want a "dirty" fusion reactor on earth? Put it in high orbit (above geosynch). The fuel doesn't weight much, so refueling isn't much of a problem, and tidal drag will actually move it _farther_ away from earth as time passes. But I digress.
In summary, while fusion is unlikely to be a perfect energy souce, it is still quite usable IMO.
Mankind can't handle change, he just finds ways of doing the same things easier
If you listen very closely to what the Agent told Morpheous in "The Matrix", you will find the truth about our species...
Let me guess: we're reading this sad little story because some scientists were tapped last weekend to think about energy sources due to the oil "shortage," right?
In the meantime, we could already power our nations automobiles with fuel made from corn instead of fossil fuels, and we don't.
We could already be spending real $$$'s on solar energy research... but, uh, not since the last oil crisis, eh?
And then there's hydrogen. Cleanest fuel known to man. There was some very promising research a while ago about producing hydrogen with engineered single-celled organisms. Gee... I wonder if those guys are getting enough funding? Duh.
Bottom line: energy research is a fucked business. Or is that energy research funding?
We're on the road to Tycho.
sigh. fusion is a nice idea, but, well, lets look at the available reactions (p is a proton, d is a deuteron, t is a triton, 3 and 4 He are the two isotopes of helium):
(p+p -> d + neutrino+electron) is a weak interaction needing a W boson, has hence a really tiny rate, and fortunately for us, it keeps the sun from going poof like a flashbulb.
(p+d -> 3He + gamma): aw bugger, the energy runs away as light. (p+t -> 4He + gamma) bugger again.
(d+d -> 3He+n or p+t) nice idea, but notice that neutron... (d+t -> 4He + n) this is an easy to produce reaction, but notice the neutron again. (t+t -> 4He +n+n) argh, two neutrons now.
(d+3He -> 4He+p) ah bliss, all that energy in charged particles. pity that the rate for this reaction is relatively low. (d+d and d+t are orders of magnitude higher and we can't yet make them work).
And what is the problems with neutrons you might ask? well , neutrons from fusion do the same thing as neutrons from fission: they activate things and make everything nice and radioactive.
Fusion is not as clean as people would have you believe. I am a intermediate energy physicist and work closely with the above stuff regularly. Of course, all the above is a lie, since my grant requests requires me to say that I can make it work, and I don't want to lose my grad students due to funding cutbacks...
name witheld through shear cowardice...helium is probably on the Moon for a reason.
Exactly. The weight of the Moon is keeping life on Earth intact. If we mess with that weight, all kinds of strange thing could happen. It's orbit could shift, tides could change, etc., etc. Granted, you'll have to take out an enormous amount of weight to make a dent in the moon's mass, but IMHO one should consider these tings.
On the other hand, the Moon is under constant attack of meteors, but so is Earth, so I think that's allright in the end. And perhaps we could dump some of our own waste there to keep the Moons weight in balance.
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"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind." (Terry Pratchett)
AFAIR (taken from a badly remembered talk at school),
...
:-)
<Blockquote>
When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited
</Blockquote>
These very same charged particles would hit the earth, but for a small matter of polarity (that is, the Earth's magnetic field repels all but a small proportion of the Helium-3 winging its way towards earth).
It just so happens that the moon doesn't have such a strong magnetic field (making this bit up here: someone please correct me as required), and more helium-3 can be "deposited in the powdery soil". (And the moon just happens to be close by... we could probably get our He-3 from them moons of Mars as required, but that isn't as much fun
As the speaker said to us: He-3 is great - except that there is (almost) no Helium-3 on Earth, and Fusion is required (also not yet working).
David Jackson
There are several advantages to this... First of all, to set up mining operations on the moon, you'd have to colonize it, more or less. The cost of colonizing it is nothing compared to the constant missions that would be required to bring enough H3 back to earth... It would be far cheaper to "convert" the energy from a plant on the moon, and beam it back to earth.
HF enthusiasts have for years, used a "moon skip" trajectory to gain more distance with their frequency bands. Why not reverse the trend, and set up an already proven power source; Microwave... In a controlled environment, a microwave beam can be used to heat water up to boiling, and presto chango, power steam/electric generators.
Another angle on this is "what kind of energy projectors will be available, when we can finally colonize the moon?" The answer is fairly unattainable at the moment, but we can project a bit...
During the 70's and 80's, the soviets built and tested several particle beams. Continuing research along this trend could yield a particle beam that can be sent to earth with almost no dispersal, and utilize ground collectors to change from one type of energy to another...
Lasers are getting bigger, and better too... As opposed to constantly aiming the beam in one direction or another, large mirrors could be set on gyroscopes and aimed to re-direct photons from the moon to any number of collector stations around the globe... AND DO IT 24/7/365. Hell, if you get a big enough laser, you could use one mirror at around half distance as a beam splitter, and distribute the photons to stations scattered around the globe. Mirrors can also be used to refocus the beam.
AND, once the moon is colonized, and powered, we can start to build Very Large Telescopes in some low G real estate, and place them on the dark side to escape IR and visible light interference from earth.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Well! This is certainly the most impressive article in the history of humanity... in case you couldn't tell, I'm being sarcastic.
After reading the article, I can sum it up as follows: whoever runs space.com called four universities and talked to four scientists. The first one said, "Yeah, you could probably get a lot of power out of H3." The other three echoed the same sentiment: "Mine the moon for H3? Uhhhh... I'm not going to... rule it out... maybe... 300 years from now, if we haven't got any other ideas... but boy, that's problematic."
So why was this <sarcasm>amazingly insightful</sarcasm> article written in the first place?
My guess is that it has something to do with the two banner ads and two other assorted ads on space.com's front page. As nice as a good, scientific discussion of helium 3 would have been, it doesn't exactly bring home the bacon.
Sigh.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
How in the world do we land a shuttle whith all that helium keeping it afloat?
Of course, if the floating problem can be overcome, imagine the impact on the party supplies industry.
Claims of its "efficiency" or "eco-friendliness" are the most base slight of hand.
With regular cars, you burn gas to create energy, and your car moves, right? But the gas is messy, dirty and dangerous (not to mention being about to run out in less than 100 yrs or so). Meanwhile, electric cars run on nice, clean electricity, right? No exhaust, no mess.
Unfortunately, that's bullshit. The electricity that powers your cute little golf cart was created by burning gas somewhere else. See those big smokestacks? That's you. But it gets worse. Because producing the electricity, distributing it, and storing it in your cars batteries are all extremely inefficient processes. Far more gas is used, and far more polution produced (fossil and/or radioactive) by electric cars than their counterparts powered by turning combustion directly into motion. Oops.
Meanwhile, there are a number of other known, tested clean, renewable alternatives now. Fuel made from corn being the most obvious. Some are even in use in other parts of the world, where "energy" is expensive and the powers that be are more distant. Why is it that out of all the alternatives, electric is the only one being "seriously" pursued? Because electric cars are actually a bullshit propaganda scheme in the first place.
Notice I haven't mentioned gas/electric hybrids, which aren't necessarily a bad thing; at least you get 60-80mpg or so. Honda is actually selling one right now, which I believe you can order...
We're on the road to Tycho.
To quote the article:
;)
When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface.
So the helium 3 on the moon isn't there due to some sort of ecological balancing act, as the moon really has no ecology, its just steller crap that has accumulated on the surface. I, too, worry about the ramifications of large scale modifications of planets and their satellites, but in this case as the helium 3 is only within the first few meters of the lunar surface, so the only real concern that I have with mining the moon for helium 3 is the actual process used to do so; i.e. what kind of byproducts are left over from refining the soil for its helium 3? But as for the actual removal of it from the moon, well, I look at the moon much as a giant asteroid, the only real difference in it being that it has enough gravity to collect garbage that passes by. If they were to discover that the moon had some sort of ecology that could be affected by mining helium 3, then that would be a different story, but all indications so far point to the moon being nothing more than a really big, dirty asteroid. Of course, if the process of removing the helium 3 meant removing a noticable percentage of the moon, I would have a problem, even if the surfers would be in heaven.
Deo
"Michael Quanlu Wang of Argonne National Laboratory used a computer simulatation to compare the use of electric and gasoline cars in four large U.S. cities. The results showed that electric vehicles would reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide by 98%. (Hydrocarbons create ground-level ozone, which causes cardiac and respiratory disease.) Emissions of nitrous oxides, another cause of ozone and acid rain, also fell.
But Wang found that emissions of sulfur oxide (a key cause of acid rain), and particulates would actually increase. (The health effects of these ultra-fine soot particles are now under increasing suspicion.)
The story for carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's taking heat for causing global warming, was more complex. At slow speeds, electric vehicles greatly reduced carbon dioxide; the effect was less dependable at higher speeds. And as you read them, remember that all calculations of pollution trade-offs will depend on the age and pollution controls of the gasoline autos and the electric-generating plants in question.
Clean? That depends on where you live... (Sound Familiar?)
To urbanites, electric vehicles truly produce"zero-emissions," Wang says, since they move all pollution to the power plant. Overall, he suggests, electric vehicles would benefit the environment by reducing hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, and thus ground-level ozone. And while more particulates would be produced (particularly if the electricity came from coal), Wang observes that most electric generators are "away from populated areas, so there would be less population exposure."
Electric vehicles also offer a way to use "green electricity" (from solar, wind and geothermal sources), as clean transportation power.
Finally, electric cars may be less energy-intensive: A recent study by Ford Motor researchers found that electric vehicles with experimental sodium-sulfur batteries would use 24 percent less energy over their life cycle compared to similar gasoline cars."
information source
-- Virtual Windows Project
Furthermore, electricity production can, in principle, be made ecologically friendly. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, etc. And, of course, fusion (in the future). Try this with your SUV.
So while electric cars are not necessarily eco-friendly today, they may well be in the not-so-distant future.
But I agree that other alternative energy sources must be researched, too.
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Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
First off, this is definitely old knowledge. The existence of He-3 on the moon is completely well known and has been for a while.
The "combined with fusion" thing is not exactly a cop-out. What they meant was that using He-3 as a fuel for fusion can produce quite a bit of energy, and He-3 is a very useful catalyst for fusion. Why? Same reason that deuterium is beneficial - because you're bypassing some of the steps in the p-p chain (the process that the Sun uses to make helium out of hydrogen). Basically, you can lower the energy threshold of sustainable fusion reactors if you already have tritium, deuterium, and Helium-3 present, because now instead of reaching the energy threshold of just one reaction (proton-proton -> deuteron) you can reach any of the steps in the p-p chain immediately. It's similar to chemistry - you can speed up a reaction if you have some of the intermediary products already available.
Second comment: what the heck are people complaining about using the moon for energy? You think solar power is better? Really? You really think it's free? Just like wind and water power is free, huh? Solar power is great - on a small scale. Try to use it for the reasons you want to use it for - like powering the *world*, for instance - and you might have a problem. All that solar energy was meant to go somewhere - the air and the ground. There's a definite solar thermal cycle, and stripping out energy can affect it. On the scales that people typically use it for now, like powering lights or scientific instruments, it's fine. Even maybe for a few supplemental reactors. But if you honestly wanted to power the world with it, you better start realizing that power generation will always hurt the environment. Always. Period. End of story.
So, then, the answer is, why the hell do we care what we do to the moon? It's *dead*. It's static. It's unchanging. Study it for a while until you mostly understand it, and then you're free to do with it what you want. Helium-3's a good idea - very good in fact. And yes, when we run out, we move on to another planet. Is this a problem? No. These planets were static. They weren't changing. We're not *affecting* anything that was important to begin with.
Here's a bit of reminder before I get flamed for being an anti-environmentalist or something strange like that. Life is destructive. It's entropic. But who cares? That's the point of the entire friggin' universe.
Interesting scientific point. Entropy is mathematically identical to the concept that Shannon (yah, the modem guy) called 'information', and it's quite appropriate. Entropy is information - it's the universe saying "Something happened here." So when people say that entropy always increases, that's correct - because things are happening - information is being generated. Thermo tries to tell us that this is a 'bad' thing - they call entropy chaos, or disorder. That carries a connotation of evil or wrong, which is not right - it's simply a way of saying "something happened here."
So we have two choices. We can avoid energy use entirely, and calmly sit here on the planet, maybe migrate when it dies, and do nothing. Might have to destroy most of Nature too. Nature is rather entropic... eats up a lot of power and just turns it into heat. Or we can do what living beings were intended to do. Live. Use the fuel that the universe gave us - just, try to make it last as long as possible. Not infinitely. We can't live forever, and we shouldn't try to.
Bottom line - there's nothing wrong with using up resources. They're there to be consumed, or else they'll just sit there forever. The real goal is to use them intelligently. In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
No, not laundry detergent. That's not funny.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I don't know the mass of the moon off the top of my head, but it is greather than quadrillions of tons (10^16 tons). Assume that a one part per billion change might cause some problems - that is still over 10^7 tons! At 1000 tons per year, that is still over ten thousand years before we could even begin to modify the moon's orbit.
Come on people, DO THE FREAKIN' MATH before you start spouting off!
Secondly, the moon is a lifeless ROCK! You could strip-mine the surface of the moon, spread the chat back over where you mined when you were done, and NOBODY COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE! I'm all for protecting the environment, but there is no environment on the moon!
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Is this a typo, or is this stuff actually that full of energy?
The Helium-3 atom is not in and of itself drastically energetic. One could not fill a bomb with He-3 alone and expect it to do anything more drastic than make the target talk funny. The excitment expressed in this article is due to the high degree of effeciency of a Fusion reaction, which can be attained with He-3.
Traditional energy sources, such as hydrocarbon combustion, only convert a tiny percentage of the available mass to energy. As shown by the famous equation E=mc^2, even a tiny amount of mass converted to energy results in quite a bit of energy. If you doubt that, go light a can of gasoline on fire. It's hot. In a comprable He-3 fusion reaction, a much greater (but stil small) fraction of the total mass is converted into energy. Thus, a small amount of He-3 could theoretically provide the same power yeild of a much greater amount of gasoline, or natural gas.
--Use this space for notes--
Yes, research is being done on using photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen (again, harvesting sunlight), and research is being done on how to store the hydrogen in a fashion that would allow you to fill your tank and have reasonable range, but it isn't here yet! And it IS being funded quite well, it's just a very hard problem and takes time.
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