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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.
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
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.
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!
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?
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.
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
Wouldn't something like this work nicely?
This is not the greatest
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.
Mankind will think their way out of the energy crisis
Certainly, but that doesn't mean you're going to like the answer.
KFG
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!
"Is Helium-3 that much easier to fuse and create energy?"
No. It's harder. It requires higher temperatures, and better containment. The only advantage when used for terrestrial uses would be the lower neutron production as compared to reactions like Deuterium-Tritium (D+He3 still produces neutrons from unwanted D+D reactions).
Deuterium-Tritium produces neutrons, but the only radioactive stuff left behind is the reactor itself, and the isotopes in question have shortish half lives (tens of years for the most part). D+T is the only way to go for the forseeable future:
-First, we know we can build a D+T reactor. We know this because we already have. It doesn't produce useful electricity, and requires more work to be economical, but it's the only reaction to acheive breakeven.
-Second, Deuterium is easy to get.
-Third, Tritium is a little annoying to get, but heavy water moderated fission reactors produce the stuff as a waste product, and those aren't going away anytime soon even if we get fusion working. Also, a D+T reactor will be able to breed its own Tritium from waste neutrons and Lithium once it's running. Lithium is easy to get.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
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.
Are you nuts?! If it can't vaporize a city, how the hell are we supposed to get the funding to build it?
Drop the failsafe and put the DoD on it. You can sneak the failsafe into the plans after we get the funding.
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.