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Lunar Helium 3 Could Meet Earth's Energy Demands
starannihilator writes "Helium 3, rare on the earth but abundant on the moon, may prove to be a feasible energy source with NASA's Moon-Mars initiative. Despite the American Physical Society's Report that the initiative harms science, the moon may actually benefit humans because it contains 10 times more energy than all the fossil fuels on earth. Long hailed as a potential source of energy, and outlined in detail by the Artemis Project, helium 3 may solve earth's energy crisis without any radioactive byproducts. The only problem: the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy. Read more about the Artemis Project's information about fusion power from the moon here." Reader muditgarg points out that India has just hosted a global conference on Moon exploration and utilization, and adds a link to this related story on KeralaNext.
If we start "mining" the moon, we will never figure out how all this energy got there in the frist place. The moon belongs in a museum!
To transport the helium, just put it all in a balloon and drop it toward earth...
Wait a second...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Even if the collection of H3 and it's conversion to useable energy was cheap... the transport costs alone would have to be killer.
I'm all for new sources of energy... but the transport issue would seem to be the first major hurdle, long before the needed reactor.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
That all of that cheese up there would be the fuel that saved the Earth!
BTW, I thought cheese generally produced methane when broken down?
...can be found in the Methane from Uranus. Talk about renewable. In spades.
So we're going to fly to the moon, pick up some feul, and hopfully fly back without any problems. Can the ship carry more helium 3 than the feul it needs to get there and back? Otherwise it seems like a compleate waste.
Won't [i]anyone[/i] think of the Mooninites?!
Let's replace a problematic energy source with another problematic energy source.
1) Who owns the moon? Does the American flag mean we own it?
2) It's non-renewable. It'll run out.
3) It's the MOON!
In my defense... It's been a long time since I gave any thought to chemical symbols.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
So, we go through another crisis when the helium runs out?
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
nothing here to see, move along
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I remind the readers that the Chinese space program is located entirely within the Chinese Department of War. The space program is designed to further the Chinese military machine.
By contrast, NASA is an entirely civilian effort.
Moon Pie in the sky.....
Once upon a time, on a moon, not too far away....
So for this entire scheme to work, we must first solve the fusion reactor problem. But once that problem is solved, why do we need to go all the way to the moon when we have the oceans? Is Helium-3 that much easier to fuse and create energy?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Here are my couple of thoughts on the subject. First, it seems like obtaining the Helium-3 would be prohibitively expensive. We would need something like a space elevator first before we could really start shuttling this stuff back to earth. I guess the other option is to build a reactor on the moon and beam the energy back to earth (but we all know how dangerous that is based on SimCity, right?).
One thing that doesn't sit easy with me wrt this is that even though there is 10x more energy in Helium-3 on the moon compared to 'fossil' fuels here on earth, I have a feeling that we would still deplete it relatively quickly (with exponential population growth and all).
I think that ultimately the answer is going to have to be with solar energy, since that is an incredible source of energy for a long time. But, whether it's looking for efficient means of converting solar energy to something usable, or transporting the Helium-3 from the moon, it's going to take the price of gas skyrocketing before people cry for a change. I just hope that by that point it's not too late.
On the gripping hand, I do have a friend whose PhD thesis was the chemistry of moon rocks - and her opinion was that mining He3 would be impractical.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I'm missing something in the article - what part of this are the leftists going to complain about? Nuclear? Increase in overall heat on the planet? Mankind will think their way out of the energy crisis; just like every other problem in the past. All with out drinking bottled water in our hybrid cars. I expect some mod abuse here by those with unlimited mod points - I really wish they would release the meta-mod statistics on mod performed in the first 10 minutes after a new story.
THATS why Bush wants a moon base!!
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
I like da moon already, and this helium will also be useful in dirigibles and zeppelins and lightbulbs!
...would be to find a way to crash the moon into the earth or generate the energy on the moon and beam it safely via gamma-ray lasers, which would boil the oceans, turning turbines to generate electricity.
THis has been known for years. Its a staple of Science ficiton, and is often used as a reason fo rgoing to the moon. THe problem is retirieving it, and sustainable fusion power.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
If 25 tons can power the US for a year... really... it's not that difficult to move 25 tons of anything from the moon to the earth for the billions we spend on electricity a year.
:)
The DoE says we produce about 3900 billion kilowatt hours. Electrical costs vary from place to place, but let's use the national average of about 8 cents per kilowatt hour... 312 billion dollars. Transportation costs from the moon for 25 tons don't look so huge now, do they?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
The problem with all these plans to "solve the energy problem" is that they ignore the fact that human energy demand is constantly growing, and growing exponentially. It's the same problem that we have with hard drives; in 1990, my 40MB hard drive was barely enough space. In 2004, my 320GB RAID array is barely enough space. Unless we control the demand for energy, all the new energy sources in the solar system won't solve the problem.
At least, as far as non-renewable resources go. Solar energy, coupled with a focus on efficiency and maybe some population control, would do far more to solve our energy problems than mining space for Helium-3. It would be safer and easier as well. Why go to the moon for energy when the sun delivers it for free?
... is that the energy in question comes from thermonuclear fusion, and fusion can be done with terrestrial elements. We don't _need_ he3 to build fusion power plants; we can build them with deuterium/tritium fuel, or even just deuterium alone. Moreover, D/T fusion only requires plasma temperatures about a tenth those of D/He3 fusion. IIRC D/D fusion is also somewhat more attainable than D/He3 (and uses an incredibly abundant fuel available on Earth - deuterium is a stable hydrogen isotope available in quantity from seawater).
The only disadvantage of hydrogen isotope fusion is radioactivity. D/T spits out fast neutrons, while D/D can produce radio-isotopes (I think - someone correct me if I've remembered wrong). Neither technology produces hazardous nuclear waste however, and the radioactivity in question would be very short lived, cooling in decades to centuries, rather than millennia. Moreover, in D/T reactor designs, the only radiation is in the core itself, and said neutron radiation can be used to "breed" tritium fuel. Disposing of fusion waste long term, either by sealing the decommissioned cores, or storing the D/D reaction products, is easier than importing he3 fuel from the moon.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
While there may be a fair amount of He3 on the moon, extracting it is dangerous and very labour intensive. On the other hand, I have read that it would be far easier to collect He3 from Uranus atmosphere, even though the distance is significantly greater. Collection from Uranus could be totally automated too. Another source could be Saturn. See here.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Sure. USA dominance = good thing, China dominance = bad thing; despite by comparison history of China being more humane than USA? Nationalist fool.
Rather than go to other planets to get our fuels why don't we explore alternitives like hybrid cars? It's got to be less expensive than going to the moon.
Last I checked, the presense of He3 on the moon was only hypothetical. Did I miss something? Did any recent probe data indicate significant quantities of He3 in lunar soil?
Then there is the other problem. We don't have practical fusion power yet. Even questionably break-even research projects are focused on Deutrium/Tritium fusion. Is anyone doing He3 for real? My understanding is that it is harder to start than DT.
While I'm at it, I might as well throw a little more salt in the wound. He3 is not neutron-free. Oh, the main reaction is and that's cool. But there are inevitable side reactions that produces neutrons. Hense, the reactor vessel is still going to end up radioactive.
I think a more realist view is that future generation will need that energy to support colonies on the moon and for travel around the solar system and other stars. Rather then try to bring it all back to earth.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
"The only problem: the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy."
What about the problem of getting it from the moon to the Earth?
..just less so. If you look up current and previous fusion reactors, you'll find that the liners and other parts of the reactor become "hot" after a while because they are pelted by stray neutrons. One of the things ITER is supposed to help find are find materials that don't become so radioactive.
I see a lot of posts complaining of the cost of flying to the moon to pick this stuff up. I think everyone needs the think about how cheap it would be to just drop this stuff on earth in a nice metal container. In this case gravity works in out favor. All the stuff has to do is escape the moons relatively light gravitational pull.
It's another matter entirely decided how to safely drop this stuff, and the politics behind this.
Keep in mind this is not a solve-our-wimpy-economy-slipping-a-little thing. It's a when-we-run-out-of-really-old-dead-things-to-burn kind of solution.
Help I'm a rock.
After thinking about all this, I was reminded of an anime called Planet ES, which deals with the near future when man has begun migrating to space and inhabiting the moon. The wealthiest countries reaped all the rewards, and the underdeveloped countries were left behind, being fed scraps and having no part in one of the greatest successes of mankind. Now, given the current state of global affairs, how likely does this sound?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
now the Chinese will be racing to establish a permanent presence on the moon just so they can claim it for themselves.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
We can't even achieve a controlled deuterium or tritium based reaction.
IIRC, the heavier an element is the harder it is to get it to fuse. (Probably the main thing is the number of protons, which translates to increased electrostatic repulsion between the nuclei.)
Honestly, He3 doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to me. Hydrogen isotope based reactions are going to be easier to achieve, and while they produce some radiation, the radiation problem of hydrogen fusion is insignificant compared to that of fission waste.
And it's even easier to obtain deuterium than it is to get He3 even if you remove the logistical issues of getting to the moon and back - Deuterium is plentiful in *sea water*.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Problems:
- The concentration of He3 in the lunar surface may be very low. It could require processing many 100's of tonnes to get a gram/ounce/drop-in-the-ocean of He3. Of course, you could build an automated solar powered mining facility on the lunar surface to do it. You'd need serious $$$ though.
- Getting it back to Earth might be a pain. You could probably wrap it up in some aluminium projectile also mined on the moon, and fire it at Earth with a linear induction track or somthing. The projectile could have an ablative heat shield to protect the tiny precious cargo. More $$$ though.
- You need an efficient fusion power plant to 'burn' the stuff in and convert the heat to electrical energy.
Rather than using it on earth to generate electricity, it might be better used as a propellant for interplanetary spacecraft. The British Interplanetary Society once had plans for something called Daedalus which I think was designed to use He3 mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter. Is that even crazier?This is not a sig
The counterargument to the APS's "report" shouldn't be "but we could solve the energy crisis," it should be "you're a bunch of self-serving, near-sighted idiots who seem to think that scientific funding *has to be* a zero-sum game. Do you realize that in the minds of many people, the bucks for probes is in part justfied by the Buck Rogers of manned space flight? Do you understand how much more fruitful it would be for planetologists to actually get to study the moon, Mars, etc. *in situ*? Do you realize that expanding the world economy into the solar system could have countless beneficial effects on all the sciences, on our standards of living, on our philosophical view of the universe? Or is protecting your research grant that much more important to you than the universe itself?"
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/005177.h
http://www.predator-hunter.com/mvaughan/persona
http://ozzie.blog-city.com/read/378673.htm
http://hyperthink.net/blog/CommentView,guid,340
Wouldn't something like this work nicely?
This is not the greatest
So do you!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I have a couple of thoughts on the subject.
1.) Where exactly in the moon is the Helium-3 located? I read the article but did not see mention of exactly where the stuff is. Is it in moon rock? Does the moon have an ultra thin atmosphere of this stuff?
2.) Putting a metric buttload of really good Helium in a ship and blasting it towards Earth where it will reenter the atmosphere at very high temperatures doesn't seem like a good idea. If anything happens, say a leak of the helium that caused an explosion, how powerful would the explosion be? Would it be high enough in the atmosphere to not worry about? Would it wipe out a state or three?
3.) Would it be possible to use the helium-3 gathered from the moon to power the ship back to Earth? Could the helium-3 be used to power small reactors on the moon to enable a robotic or human colony to thrive?
4.) What would happen to the moon if it were mined? How stable is the moon, and if we start taking stuff off of the moon and putting it on Earth, what happens to the moon's orbit? the Earth's orbit?
It seems interesting, but I don't know how well mining the moon sits with me. Didn't anyone see that episode of Sliders where the moon was mined so much it broke up and headed towards Earth in continent sized chunks!?
Maybe rather than having go back and forth continuously for fuel it'd be more economical in the long run to build a reactor on the moon and have energy transmitted back to Earth via microwaves. Something like this http://www.kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/plasma-group/sps/y amasaki-e.html
Step 3: Profit!
Noting that the parent is already at -1, he/she is apparently correct about moderation. So, to assist others with complaints, here is The Leftist Complaint List:
1) Being nuclear fusion, it involves the word Nuclear, and therefor is unsafe.
2) It isn't solar or wind powered, the only acceptable methods of harnessing energy for the ultra-politically-correct/ultra-left environmental extremists.
3) Since it involves the energy industry, it must have a Bush/Cheney/Haliburton tie-in, which is inherently bad.
4) Harvesting Helium 3 from the moon may destroy a fragile environment that some undiscovered life form may require.
Feel free to add more, and remember to browse at -1 since we know these posts aren't going to be rated any higher.
Moon Tycoon would be a prophecy
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
The article there appears to be a stub, so here's hoping that those slashdotters that know a little more on the subject can contribute.
Help the wiki!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
The moon may one day serve as a meteor shield, if we make it hallow from mining it looses density and thus mass.
The moon controls our tides and should be left as it is.
Why UNIX?
Americans put their feet on it first, so there you go - Moon is now US property. That's the payoff of the Cold War.
Very well, imagine the unregulated tides of cult based behavior magnitudes more powerful than that currently occurring in the USA, that is China without its proper and just government of the people's dictatorship. The poor and uneducated die, yes, but those past that point live on subject to nearly evolutionary stakes of success and life or failure and death. That is the nature of humanity, that is being humane in the most objective sense of the word. Tibet, a haven for religious extremists but as the totalitarian monks were not covered in the "West", the "West" does not know. Tibet had to be taken down without reservations. On your second point, national sovereignty is more important than even 400 million lives if it preserves the life of 600+ million. The actions taken were harsh, but necessary and just.
Yes, I'm feeding the troll.
Most of us know and are sympathetic to the Tibet situation. Now will you quit hijacking other people's topics and trolling with it?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Phase 1) Mine He3 from the moon
Phase 2).........
Phase 3) Profit
That whole phase 2 thing is inventing and debugging a power generating He3 reactor and MHD power generating system, a pretty big step.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
It's free, abundant and available everywhere ! We should start to use the other sources (helium3/nuclear/potatoes) that pollute only once we reach the limits of clean energies. The fact we still use fossil fuel give me the creeps - major fuel companies have so much to lose.
Does anything think this sound bit like the movie & game of Dune????
Don't mine the moon! Look at what happened to Praxis.
What I keep wondering is why hasn't anyone looked at HEAT. If we could harness direct heat to energy conversion via quantum conversion then we could simply drill into the GROUND drop pure diamond collectors (made via CVD for solid state energy conversion) and connected via nanotubing and have an abundent source of energy for at least a few millions years...
c ro1-JHT02.pdf
Think about it. It's clean. It's efficient. And it can be found in every country of the world!
Here's a link: http://quantum.soe.ucsc.edu/publications/01_02/Mi
What do YOU think? Is it a viable solution?
Cheers!
Smile.
We do not live back then. We live in November 27, 2004.
We live in 4641, you insensitive clod!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
A solar powered mass driver could move the H3 into Earth orbit quite easily. These are the top three URL's from my google for "mass drivers"
m
http://www.permanent.com/t-massdr.htm
http://www.permanent.com/t-massdr.htm
http://www.spacecolonization.com/massdrivers.ht
Besides a scientific station, this would be another reason for a permanent colony on the moon.
I think it's about time we bring our democracy values and love of freedom to the moon.
I believe that the HE3 on the moon will be the catalyst for the eventual colonization of the Moon and Teraforming/colonization of Mars.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Let's deplete the moon. Yay!
Mod the parent up! It's true!
link
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
This is exactly what I need for my new devious plan! /Dr Evil
"For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the He3 fusion plants have been proved out, and folks are frantically building them,"
They haven't, therefore the entire discusion of looking for and transportin HE3 and using it as a power source is irrelevant.
Made even more irrelevant by the fact that the reaction specified requires equal amounts of deutirium. Another item we don't have loads of about. Where to we go to get the deutirium? The planet Mercury?
And what's this about HE3 only being availaible on the moon. It's also available on Earth, and used already. And in fact would probably be easier to manufacture on Earth than to mine it from the moon.
But all made even more irrelevant by the fact that if we can get an HE3/H2 reactor to work, we can probably get an H reactor to work. Maybe it won't be as efficient, but at least we don't have to go to the moon to get the fuel. Not to mention that a straight Hydrogen fusion reaction leaves over just a neutron, while an HE3/H2 reaction leaves over a proton, making it slightly more radioactive.
The entire concept is as ridiculous as the other "Enviornmentally friendly" alternatives bandied about, like solar stirling engines, wind farm, you might as well propose hamsters on treadmils or burning perriwinkles. They are all about equally feasible.
Well, I think the idea isn't bad, but what happens if we start "mining" the moon for Helium 3 (and if the technology is available) probably for other elements? Could it be possible to change the moon's weight in such a way that it affects it's ability to create our tides and among them irreversibly changes the biological processes tied to the tidal changes? I'm not a physicist but would that be possible?
... MICROWAVES to transmit the energy down to the earth for distribution. this HAS been achieved.
Lunar Space Elevator
Those first two look surprisingly similar... Is this some kind of new information stealthing technology?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Seriously, if the moon is such an abundant source of energy, Why not just build an an energy processing plant up there and get some lunar bases running? Then just wrap it in a giant bubble ala Spaceballs and work on developing a sustainable atmosphere,
If we can manage that much, maybe going to mars might seem a lot more realistic to those of us who think it can't be done.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I'd be extremely skeptical of this until someone shows some real discussion (i.e. not just puff-pieces on space.com) as to why this is feasible. Anyone? Of course, you also have to show that fusion using He-3 can be done (it's harder than D-T fusion, which we still haven't mastered, I might add).
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
For today's more retarded moderators who are inclined to mod the parent as Troll, I give you the Wikipedia entry for the Chinese calendar system
Note that the years relative to the Christian calendar that it has mainly considered to have started on: 2637 B.C. According to Wikipedia, that puts us at year 4641.
I hope you feel more educated about this. See you in metamoderation.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
In general, standard of living is directly proportional to energy consumption. This may not hold completely true, and conservation may help. However, conservation tends to be on the order of saving 5% here, 10% there. Increases in energy usage, on the other hand, are often orders of magnitude. I want my standard of living to keep going up. The only way to stop demand from growing is to freeze everything the way it is today, and I don't like that idea at all.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
What if we have a mining accident like Klingons had in their moon? The one that forced then to join Federation, remeber? It would be messy... http://www.trekmania.net/conference/chronology.htm
(year 2293)
Yeah, reducing the weight of Moon will make all surfers on the Earth cream. :)
Score:0, Troll
Oooo oo oo, just had to spend those mod points, didn't we? Why don't you go look for something positive?
It's dickheads like you, that force us to browse at -1 nested.
Nuclear makes you glow
Coal polutes the air/destroys the ground
Oil same problem
Solar only works during the day/expensive
Wind only works in wind areas
Tidal doesn't work well
Hydro destroys eco systems
Wood eco destruction/polution
Agricultural based causes enviro/air/water polution eats into food production capabilities.
The thing is if you don't pick one then you end up with nothing.
1) Who ever wants it feel free to come get it
2) It's renewable just put good ol' regular He up there and let the cosmic rays do the rest.
3) Very observant of you, what's your point? They used to think peopel were crazy and was to much trouble to drill out in the open ocean for oil even as late as the 80's.
This might be good if we ever have a colony/moon-base up there. We wouldn't have to ship up to them sea water... but then again they could probably get some energy from good old sol...
Now if you'd like to license it, here are the terms (pdf).
Note: By looking at the moon(tm), using it as a source of nocturnal illumination, or using its gravitational field for any purpose (e.g. use of tides and tidal forces) then you agree to the terms in the EULA.
Dredging the surface of the moon, spoiling its pristine nature for about ever. Great for future space tourists looking for unspoilt place to hike.
Bert
The moon is a key piece of our enviroment (tides, etc), should we really do things to it which over time would have a significant impact on it's mass? Wouldn't that have a tendancy to change it's orbit, which could result in bad things for Earth? I mean, 25 tons isn't that much of a change, even for the moon, but then you have the idea that other lunar material would be used to create containment units for transport back to earth, (which saves us cost as only a base station needs to be sent to the moon and here on Earth we can just launch a satellite which could capture a payload from orbit and parachute down), but over a long period (...a REALLY long period) could this have an adverse effect?
Also, the article states that there is only about 10 kilos of helium in on Earth, so what would be the effect of adding another 25 tons of it to the atmosphere, even if it only happened in the event of an accident? Could it have a profound effect on the planet or would we all just talk a little higher pitched?
I know the mass change = orbit shift is pretty unlikely but the extreme atmospheric ratio change seems a bit profound to me, unless the article is wrong about how much helium is currently in the atmosphere (10 kilos seems like quite a small amount)...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
If you try proposing the extraction of fusion fuel from lunar rock, despite the fact that the idea sounds "far out" you'll still find open minded people who will take you seriously and consider the proposal on its merits.
If you propose extracting Helium 3 from the outer planets, on the other hand, any scientific and economic benefits worthy of discussion will be shouted down by jerks like me who are way too amused by "extracting powerful gasses from the methane of Uranus" jokes.
What happens when the amount of lunar dust removed significantly diminishes moon weight? Won't that affect Earth tides and whatever? Not to mention the disappointed romantic couples in year 7004.
This is like the 500th post about some silly space war, even if it is in jest.
Here's the thing.. there never will be a space war. It's far cheaper and more effective to just lob a nuke towards the country you're pissed at than spend billions of $$ trying to wage an impossible war.
I mean, I guess if you have an unlimited amount of resources and can build a death star that can take out entire planets, then it probably doesn't matter much. But at some point in time those nasty imperialists lived on a planet. A planet that would have been much easier to wage a war on than out there in silly space. Take out their central city (or cities) and you pretty much disabled them. They aren't going to fly off like Darth Vader and try to regroup. They'll be lucky to find each other again. Once you disrupt the social fabric they can't regroup.
...they could use the power to make thousands of lights shine on the earth so that this stupid "daylight savings" becomes moot because it's always "daytime".
Or maybe make the lights spell something like "Big Brother loves you" or "Buy Colgate".
So many people posted that the cost of transporting H3 back to Earth makes it an illogical fuel, but what about bringing the reactor TO the moon to generate the energy and keep it there? I mean we'll be getting a moon base soon (I hope) within 30 or so years. If there isn't a power plant drafted yet for the moon base, this reactor is it!
Well, apart from being simplistic, jingoistic and offensive, it's wrong
Art. 11 Sec. 2. The moon is not subject to national appropriation by any claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
But what is the SIGnificance?
Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year.
Only 10 kilograms of helium are available on earth.
I don't know, to me 25 tonnes seems like a lot, and only the US for one year? this seems like it is going to deplete much faster than fossilfuels.
Just my few cents
Isn't the real counterargument here that we don't need to be adding any more energy to the balance than we get from the sun if we want to avert serious and possibly irreversable climate change.
This is not a good thing.
"When no-one around you understands start your own revolution and cut out the middle man"
...deck chairs on the Titanic, i.e. pointless measures which deny the inevitable -- namely, the need for conservation, population stabilization, and sustainable versions of the institutions required for supporting human societies.
The only problem: the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy.
Oh, yeah, and it's also on the moon.
He's right: in china, people as dumb as him are forcibly sterilized, and their families billed, so they can't create more little trolls!
The only problem: the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy.
I don't know, I consider trying to get anything ON THE MOON to also be slightly problematic.
It's that moons *always* provide an abundance of energy. Were it not for the stripmining the Klingons performed on Praxis, the empire might well have given Starfleet a real run for their money in the game of galactic dominance.
Likewise, the Remans had enough energy mined from their planet/moon that they were able to overthrow the Romulan senate and pose a major threat to Starfleet (via Picard).
And lastly, was it not the Cardasians that put all the Bajorans to work in the ore reprocessing facility deep in the heart of Terak Nor? That ore had to come from somewhere, and I'd be dollars to donuts that it came from a moon orbiting Cardasia Prime.
So let's get off our lazy butts, resurfance the Valdez, park it in orbit around the moon, and start carving out some of that Helium-3 goodness!
-c
Do it for da shorties
For your point of view to get even a second glance, you must be able to differentiate between H and He.
hahahahaha. Right.
I wouldn't fear some spaced based particle weapon from the chinese as much as I would the improved ballistic missle capabilities that a space program really gives its parent nation. Perhaps that is too rational and entrenched in reality for you to grasp.
Beware blue cats moving at
Going to the moon and taking its resources is much easier than conserving energy!
If all else fails... RTFM
That's not true, the usual, and perfect, example are SUVs, they waste a lot of energy for no good reason, you can get equivalent (or better) mobility, etc, from a more economic vehicle. The problem is currently energy is very cheap, if energy were more expensive, then having more efficient use of energy would give the possibility of doing more for the same price/amount of energy. The current problem is lack of care and cheap energy, IMHO.
You have a huge supply of almost-free energy, a better vacuum than we can make here on earth, a very low gravity, and no environmental regulations.
The Moon might be a great place to build manufacturing plants for all sorts of energy-hungry and/or hazardous processes. The only thing you need ship back to Earth is the end product (high-profit-per-pound goods).
And, if something goes explosively wrong, we can always send in John Koenig to take care of it!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
The article stated that 200 million metric tons of lunar soil would have to be mined to extract 1 metric ton of Helium-3. It also stated that there is an estimated 1 million tons of Helium-3 on the Moon. Do the math:or 200 trillion tons (billion if you're British
The Moon masses approximately 7.4 x 10**22 kg. So we're talking about extracting 200 x 10**15 kg (1 metric ton = 1000 kg) from 7.4 x 10**22 kg, or about 2.7 millionths of the Moon's mass.
And that's if we take it all . And that's assuming that we don't develop a more efficient means of extracting the Helium-3 over the next few thousand years.
I really wish people would use their brains more than they do...
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Lunar lander, supposed to return with valuable helium-3 today, landed with no helium-3 onboard. The astronauts were interviewed immediately following the mission, but no explanation was given due to the astronauts laughing continuously and talking with high pitched voices.
"Dr Taylor says 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium."
WTF crack are you people smoking???? I know we love to repost this story on Helium 3 From Outer Space, but we're talking about strip-mining the moon to the tune of 200 MILLION TONNES. Since when was this a good idea again???? The reactor technology isn't the only thing in it's infancy here. We're looking at nothing short of a full scale industrial revolution taking place on the moon, along with the massive transport and support infrastructure needed to keep it operational. At today's- no, scratch that -even at tommorow's level of technology, the time, money and rescources it'll take to mine 200 million tonnes of moon rock for one ton of helium 3 will be so outrageous as to make your ass pucker.... Which will only power the damn country for a year.
And that's not even touching the fact that you're destroying the moon. Hey, I don't care. Do it on the dark side (more tech/support/infrastructure challenges), but you're gonna have a tough time convincing people that staring at a gutted, strip mined celestial body in high orbit is where it's at... And I'm guessing, being the slashnot astronomer that I am, that is where most of the largest density of helium 3 is going to be found: The side facing the solar winds.
200 freakin million tonnes. Genius.
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Is the Casimir Effect. Magic energy from the quantum field. Poorly understood, although it doesn't violate any of the laws of thermodynamics or physics as we understand them - and the experiment is easily replicatable for anyone who cares to try.
Be it this, helium-3, or something else, the western world needs a way to generate one whopping pile of energy through a renewable means.
..don't panic
The Deuterium-3Helium reaction that this article describes does in fact produce MeV-scale energetic protons (in addition to the alpha particle), which in fact do make things very radioactive. This is not 'clean'. The other reaction to note here is p-11Boron, which is notable because it only produces alpha particles, which, being charged, do not leave magnetic confinement. Unfortunately, the cross-section for p-11B is smaller still than D-3He's cross section, which is smaller than D-Tritium.
Jeez, not only did the poster not RTFA's, neither did the moderator!
I wouldnt be too worried about vast mining on the moon as it seems there are some nice technologies now taking advantage of solar, wind and water currents to produce energy, so even if this stuff was mined, it may not be around for a while in favour of some totaly renewable energy source.
Is this stuff in the rock or what? Could enough be mined that the decrease in the moons mass (even be it so slight) could have an adverse effect on the earth? As we all know, the moon is responsible for the lowering and raising of tides through out the world and probably many other things we dont know about yet. Are we ready to mine the moon? In the past we thought we knew what we were doing with logging, mineing and hunting of animals, but it all turned into shit. Could it happen again on a wider scale by mineing the moon?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
In the meantime you can set up fusion prize awards to incentivize development of the technologies necessary to burn He3 if you find it is economic.
Seastead this.
Actually, the economics of H3 are fully dependent on having usable reactors and an ability to obtain H3.
The cost to get it "down here" is comparatively minor. A single shuttle load would power the US' electicity needs for about a year. Further, the tranportation of it is coming DOWN a gravity well, not up it. Maybe you are somehow thinking of sending it up there and then bringing it back?
Easy.
1. Send a shuttle up with a normal payload.
2. Deliver payload.
3. Rendezvous with cargo ship from Luna
4. Return to Earth.
Cheap. The rendezvous work would be done by the cargo ship from Luna. Said ship should would be rather lightweight and simple; being made specifically for the purpose.
The cost of establishing and mining the H3 is a major impediment; possibly more so than the reactor.
Lunar regolith is very pernicious stuff. It is extremely coarse and fine. It gets into everything, and as it has no wind to soften it's edges, is very damaging to the equipment. Further, mining on the Moon will require a significant amount of energy as well; in means of support and mining, as well as equipment repair and replacement. Mining equipment is not exactly small. And if you RTFA, you find that to get a single tone of H3 you need to process about 200 million tons of lunar regolith.
That's about 550.000 tons per day, or about 23,000 tons/hour. That's just a single ton of H3. Since it would take approximately 25 of those to run the US for a single year, you would need to multiply the above volume by 25. In other words, you need to be able to do the equivalent of processing over half a million tons of lunar regolith per hour 24x7. The quipment costs alone would be staggering, IMO.
This is one reason that lunar H3 processing will not usably take place until a Mars colony is thriving and able to manufacture what is needed. It is cheaper to land equipment on the moon if launched from Mars than from Earth Same thing for orbit.
This could in fact be one of the moneymakers for a Martian settlement. A single ton of He3 would supply a sizeable Martian settelement for a long time. Establishing He3 mining from a Martian settlement would aid it's independence and provide a powerfully effective export. At an estimated 4 billion dollars per ton, it'd pay for a lot. IMO a lot of that would be eaten by mining equipment costs.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
If we can reduce CO2 in the atmosphere we can make it more transparent (in the appropriate infrared frequency range), so less energy is stored on Earth's surface before it returns to space. That's what makes the difference.Adding new energy sources like fission or fusion only adds to the outgoing energy flow at parts per million levels, making essentially no difference to temperature on Earth.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Population is already close to stabilized worldwide, I don't know why people still argue about this. Increased energy intensity is central to development and standards of living, and this (and some of the other space options) provides far more energy than we have renewably available on Earth, therefore far better standards of living for all Earth's people. I think that's a good thing.
Energy: time to change the picture.
If we start carving up the moon it's going to look really ugly from my back yard, with deep mining pits, and blinking lights from some future base. Lets limit scientific activities, mining and development to the far side only.
If you'd like to challenge that claim, please feel free to take our flag down.
And then what? Will you start the WW4?
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
That is why I think the Clinton "BTU tax" as a broad-based tax didn't go anywhere. In order to get the environmental benefit of cutting back on the worst energy wastage, you end up putting a broad-based price hike on the entire economy with attendant inflation and so on. That is also why I support tightening CAFE standards and broadening them to include SUVs rather than increasing gas taxes beyond the requirements to pay for roads.
http://dark-helmet.urbanup.com/913261
A pretty short article! More synonyms and examples would be appreciated!
Help the Urbandictionary!
The something everyone including yourself is overlooking would be the "facts".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
"Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine"
Ernest Rutheford, 1933
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
yes, He-3 does seem to be a useful substance. Some of us freshmen students at Thomas Jefferson Sci & Tech are doing a lunar project, and my particular area of interest was with He-3. A good article concerning He-3 was in the October '04 Popular Mechanics magazine.
Fossile Fuels are used here to avoid nuclear
energy.. Why not put a nuclear energy plant on the moon and beam the energy here. Same for creating hydrogen fuel.. You need energy to create hydrogen
fuel, the most abundant fuel this planet has is uranium, why not use that to make hydrogen fuel?
Just say no to license servers!!
He mentions He3 in his books. The Night's Dawn Trilogy in particular. Except they got it from Jupiter.
Bringing ore from Cardasia Prime to Terak Nor is a long way to travel, even at warp. The ore probably came from the bad lands or the other planets / moons in the Bajor system.
Am I the only one to see it ? It speaks about nuclear FUSION fuel. The hard part is not to find the fuel (the needed deuterium can be easily extracted in ocean water) it is to make a working power plant. Optimistic expectations are at about 40 years for the first fusion reactor and that doesn't include the one-year bitching about the location of the prototype. Don't waste your time considering the moon as a fuel mine before a working fusion reactor exists. There must be other interesting minerals on the moon, let's send an orbiter with a spectrometer like the one used to find high hydrogen concentration under mars soil and let's map moon's ressources. If we find enough precious or semi-precious minerals there, exploiting it and bringing them back to earth should be easy (with no atmosphere and such a weak gravitation, a gauss-gun or even a catapult could work)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"You need an efficient fusion power plant to 'burn' the stuff in and convert the heat to electrical energy."
You actually need an operating fusion power plant first. Best estimates I have seen: 20 years away, aka, energy source of the future and always will be... Not much point worrying about HE3 on the lunar surface before we are sure we can use it.
Your morning dump could power the country for a day if you could harness the inherent energy. I am amused by all these exoctic schemes.
um...yay. more fucking china-bashing again today. didn't get it out of your system yesterday huh ?
I will not be using Plan 9 in the creation of weapons of mass destruction to be used by nations other than the US.
Helium-3 may be the power source of the future, but we should probably figure out how to use it for that purpose first. All it's good for now is making people sound like chipmunks.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
uh hello, you completely ignored the "fact" that with our current technology the undertaking would require us essentially ripping off chunks of the moon, bringing it back to earth, mining it for helium, and then discarding it. and explain to me how LOWERING its mass would stabilize the orbit? it would make the moon more likely to fling away because of its being lighter.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
For any of those who are wondering about this, the parent post is a SimCity reference (at least SimCity 2000, since I haven't played any later versions).
"Llama" was the medium game speed, and "Cheetah" was the fast game speed. One usually went to Cheetah when there wasn't much to do at the moment, and all you wanted to do was to wait for time to pass.
I think the slowest game speed was "Turtle" or something like that.
It seems its mostly immature kids who are left, and they mod like crap. I suggest using the metmod system to get them weeded out...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
When figuring how much it would take to transport the stuff back to earth, remember that you are transporting something that does not require "life support", e.g. oxygen, heat, shielding, etc.
Also, you are taking off in 1/6th of Earth's gravity, so it's much easier to get yourself into a trans-earth flight path.
The other thing to remember is that you don't need to use some shuttle-style thermal tile scheme to survive re-entry. Just use an epoxy-based ablative heat shield a la Mercury / Gemini / Apollo to get your container into the Pacific, and then pick it up with a boat and crane.
This could be done pretty damn cheaply (in comparison to using a man-rated spacecraft), assuming you get the stuff ready to go.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.