Mine The Moon For Helium-3

Rob Kennedy writes "A story at The Daily Cardinal is reporting that UW-Madison researchers are looking to mine the moon for helium-3 as an energy source, which supposedly would yield about 1000 times more energy per pound than coal. Although there are several hurdles that would need to be cleared, The Associated Press mentions one catch in particular: 'The researchers still are working on building a helium-3 reactor that would produce more energy than it takes in.' Indeed. SciScoop has a more in-depth discussion of the prospect."

Comments

Re:In other news

[wass]

meanwhile cryogenics folks will rejoice because currently He3 is very expensive. And He3 cryostats are the basic workhorse for getting below temperatures of 1K.

Evaporative pumping of He3 can get you to about 250 mK, and using a He3/He4 dilution refrigerator can get one to about 10 mK.

A cheaper source of He3 would be good news, currently it's several hundred bucks for (I think) a liter of He3 gas at STP.

Re:On a more serious note

[jafiwam]

Not that I am an oceanographer or anything... But tides from the moon do cause currents; however the big "belt" currents of cold water circling the globe (or winding around rather) are caused by cooling of water at the poles (which then sinks) and to a certain extent the fresh water taken out by freezing.

Likewise, there is no country on Earth that has the budget to move enough mass either way to affect the Moon/Earth system. Simply ain't gonna happen.

(Earth loses atmosphere all the time, and takes on tons and tons of stardust from outerspace too... nobody worries about that changing orbits or tides.)

So mod parent down for "technically correct" but way overblowing the wrong thing.

Re:Slightly more sarcastical view

[kippy]

This guy is a dipshit. I've written to him and got back a pretty weak argument in return. He said he's a physics major but he didn't catch a huge error in something that I wrote and caught later. Here's our corespondence.

Re:This explains everything!

[thelexx]

His understanding may not be as iron-clad as it seems:

Black Gold in the Gulf

I'm keeping an eye on both that and this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerizat ion

If either one is totally proven, or especially if combined, it could be the end of the world oil problem.

Yes.

[Svartalf]

Chernobyl.

(Yes, I know that others have said the same thing- but allow me to expand on this...)

When Chernobyl reactor #4 exploded, it sprayed a radioactive cloud that would have killed everyone for many hundreds of miles around the damn thing if it weren't for the prevailing wind conditions and the local fauna dissipating goodly portions of the radioactive cloud. (To put what we are talking about here in perspective, the soldiers collecting bits and pieces of the moderator debris flung from the reactor recieved their lifetime safe dosage of radiation in the 90 or so seconds they were out picking this stuff up. They all died, by the way, over the following several years with various unusual conditions- as if they were irradiated with a very high radiation dose over several months' time.)

We were lucky with the Three Mile Island incident- had it gone just a little differently, we'd have experienced our OWN Chernobyl.

While I'm all for improving Fission reactors, the risks are still WAAAAY high for when something screws up (and invariably it does...) and the ash from the current fission designs is too damn dangerous to keep about and we've got no good way of disposing of it in a safe manner.

Why Work In A Gravity Well?

[DynaSoar]

Mining the moon would require placing the equivalent of heavy "earth" moving equipment on the surface. Doing that is expensive. So is getting the results back off the surface. He3 is only in the first few feet of moon surface because it comes from the sun. Go to the source.

A better design would be a sol-centric orbital platform, say in Mercury's L-5 point, collecting solar wind via magnetic trap (the "ram-scoop" idea) and using an on board mass spectrometer to separate the components, which are then bottled for use, storage or shipping. In that orbit, there'd be sufficient solar power to run all that.

Set up a veritable merry-go-round of solar sail craft to go pick up and return the He3, and whatever else you want, and pay nothing in fuel costs. So what if they're slow. They're cheap. Build lots. Build *them* on the moon, or better, out of asteroids. You don't want these things slamming into Earth? Don't nuke 'em, smelt 'em.

Gerard O'Neill gave us lots of good ideas. We'd do well to remember that he didn't get them from professional scientists and engineers with reputations to make and maintain. He got them from undergraduates, whose class project it was to think these things up. Having a reputation to lose to your less foresightful colleagues sure puts a damper on innovation.

Anything is possible, with just a few snags

[zapp]

researchers still are working on building a helium-3 reactor that would produce more energy than it takes in

So let's see, the only thing in the way of their plans is this silly little law of physics that says energy in must equal energy out. period. you can't create energy, you can't destroy it.

On the same line, getting to the galaxy next door is right around the corner, we just need to figure out how to go 10,000x the speed of light.

Oh, and immortality is close too, we just need to get around that "death" thing.

Gimme a break.

Re:In other news

[gaijin99]

Second, don't hold your breath waiting for politicians to approve spending that will destroy the coal and oil industries. It may seem like a swell idea, but the collective worth of the coal and oil industries will be fighting it.

The USA isn't the only nation on Earth, don't forget that. Japan is set to be the site of the newest research fusion reactor, they have no fossil fuels of any sort and seriously dislike the vulnerarble position this puts them in (Japan's invasion of China during WWII was partially due to their need for Chinese coal and oil). As an American, I'd much rather see the US be at the forefront of this effort; its the future. As a human, I'm glad that *someone* is doing it, regardless of which nation.

First off, according to the linked articles (what? you read those?) the fusion reactors that would use this energy source don't work yet.

Keyword here is "yet". I know that for the past 40 years people have been saying "fusion is just 5 years away", but this time it really does look possible. The newest research fusion reactor is expected to be the last research fusion reactor. Because they believe that the next one will be commercial. Right now research reactors are getting 99% efficiency (meaning it takes only 1% more energy than they produce to keep the reaction going). The new research reactor is planned to be quite a bit larger than all the previous ones, there's a good chance that simply scaling up will push them over the edge to power surplus. Fusion will happen, and it will happen in our lifetimes. Weather the US is leading the way or not is a totally different question.

And finally, we need to keep a little perspective. Don't run out and buy your stock in Lunar Industries Inc. just yet. It's going to take a long time, especially until there's any profit.

I never said it'd be a short term investment, just that it'd be worthwhile. Invest early and your grandchildren will thank you. If Colombus had sold stock it wouldn't have paid off early, but the ultimate payoff would have been incredible.

And talking about Terran this and Lunar that is just going to make you look like a sci fi freak, and I don't think you'll be taken very seriously.

Ahem, I preseume this is because I said "Lunar Steel", then later mentioned that it would be chaper than "terran steel"? WTF? Personally I think saying "moon steel", and "Earth steel" sounds (simply due to the sounds of the words) dumb. More to the point, what did NASA call its *MOON* lander? If you said "LEM", you win the prize, and what did LEM stand for? Why *LUNAR* Exploration Module. Gee, those stupid sci fi freaks at NASA, no one will ever take them seriously. Sheesh...