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The Outfall of a Helium-3 Crisis

Posted by samzenpus on from the mining-the-moon dept.

astroengine writes "The United States is currently recovering from a helium isotope crisis that last year sent low-temperature physicists scrambling, sky-rocketed the cost of hospital MRI's, and threw national security staff out on a search mission for alternate ways to detect dirty bombs. Now the panic is subsiding, what is being done to conserve, or replace, helium-3?"

5 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. an outlaw of balloons by Dan667 · · Score: 1, Troll

    based on how the government usually operates I expect this would be a typical response.

    1. Re:an outlaw of balloons by jdpars · · Score: -1, Troll

      You missed the point. The government always reacts stupidly to things like this, so they'd ban regular helium just to "save" the helium-3.

    2. Re:an outlaw of balloons by larry+bagina · · Score: -1, Troll

      Ahem. You missed the point. The government always reacts stupidly to things like this, so they'd ban regular helium just to "save" the helium-3.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    3. Re:an outlaw of balloons by Toonol · · Score: -1, Troll

      You're missing the point. Nobody is saying they're out to get us. They're out to help us, and will make things worse by their incompetent and misguided actions. I'll cite any newspaper from any day in the last hundred years for evidence.

  2. Free market by snsh · · Score: 0, Troll

    If most of the helium-3 demand is driven by lung x-rays, and you suddenly need $5000 of He-3 instead of $500 of He-3 to do an x-ray, then the result will simply be fewer people and animals getting x-rays.

    Unless the situation is that government funded Medicaid/Medicare is going cover the $5000 cost for the x-ray, in which case the result will simply be the owners He-3 stockpiles getting insanely rich at the expense of taxpayers.