4 ms·

If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons?

chimeracoder 10y ago
> If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons? Same reason why we use potable water (an expensive resource) to flush our toilets - some mixture of laziness, lack of awareness, apathy, and cost.
- zymhan 10y ago
  Potable water is not expensive everywhere. Also, laying a second, redundant network of water pipes so that we can flush with "gray water" would be ridiculously costly. In buildings that can recycle their own water, gray water systems work, but it's a whole new problem to retrofit buildings with one.
- mikeash 10y ago
  That's a pretty good analogy. Both cases represent an insignificantly small usage of their respective resources, gain attention merely because they're immediately visible in our lives, and act as a distraction from the real problems. For water, agricultural use vastly outweighs the use from flushing toilets. For helium, medical and industrial uses far outweigh what goes into balloons.
  - zymhan 10y ago
    I think your analogy is better than GPs, as you actually framed the issue in terms of proportional consumption.
zymhan 10y ago
Part of it is because the US government directed the reserve to sell Helium off to pay it's debt. We were using Helium decades ago though, I'm not sure why the price has always been cheap enough to justify using it as a party favor. One would think it would follow a typical supply/demand curve at some point.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  The short answer is that the "we're running out of helium" scare stories have always been grossly misleading, for much the same reasons that we've been hitting "peak oil" for two decades now. Helium is available, as this story makes clear. But there's been enough of it recovered from mining & gas extraction that it hasn't been profitable to do direct helium-only exploration; this is also why it's cheap enough to use on birthday parties. As the helium reserve declines, and known helium sources dry up, prices will rise (are rising). That will drive an increased market for helium exploration. Presumably demand for balloons is much more elastic than demand for medical helium, so I think the answer is "we aren't that short on helium yet".
hangsi 10y ago
There is lots of it now, so the market price is low. The reason that this is a problem is that compared to other raw materials like oil, there is basically nothing that can be used as an acceptable substitute for helium in its scientific/industrial uses. Also, the prospects for finding new helium reserves is much lower than for many other materials.
- randyrand 10y ago
  It's going to run out eventually one day. So whats the point in trying to conserve it? You're just delaying the problem by a few decades. What good does that do? (serious question).
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    We can delay the problem far more than a few decades. A lot of scientific equipment is now recycling helium, for example. It doesn't typically get consumed like oil or natural gas (it is inert, after all) so we can get by with our relatively fixed supply if we are smart about it. Which is why some people get really upset about the utter squandering of He.
stymaar 10y ago
Because the willingness to pay an helium balloon to a kid is higher than in most helium use-cases. (=> The added value per volume is way higher). And there is also no - safe - cheaper alternatives. That's how free market works !
Bartweiss 10y ago
The market has been distorted since ~1996 by the federal decision to sell off the National Helium Reserve. That said, the "we're running out of helium" scare stories are misleading. The reason no one has looked for it directly (instead of as a side product to natural gas) is that it's been too cheap to make that profitable. Medical helium is an inelastic good, so discovery will increase as prices rise. Like the difference between "proven reserves" and the amount of oil actually in the ground, we are "running out" of helium only for the discovered-and-exploited version of helium.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
logfromblammo 10y ago
To make them buoyant. And to do the munchkin voice party trick. The same could be accomplished with hydrogen gas, but if you get one too close to the birthday candles, they can produce a spectacular fireball that might startle your party guests into soiling themselves. Human nature being what it is, that and the misattribution of the damages in the Hindenberg disaster to its hydrogen contents is quite enough to convince people to use the inert fossil gas instead of the reactive renewable gas. Methane and ammonia party balloons haven't caught on, either, probably due to explodiness and stinkiness, respectively.

> If helium is so important and rare why do we put it in balloons? Same reason why we use potable water (an expensive resource) to flush our toilets - some mixture of laziness, lack of awareness, apathy, and cost.

zymhan 10y ago
Potable water is not expensive everywhere. Also, laying a second, redundant network of water pipes so that we can flush with "gray water" would be ridiculously costly. In buildings that can recycle their own water, gray water systems work, but it's a whole new problem to retrofit buildings with one.
mikeash 10y ago
That's a pretty good analogy. Both cases represent an insignificantly small usage of their respective resources, gain attention merely because they're immediately visible in our lives, and act as a distraction from the real problems. For water, agricultural use vastly outweighs the use from flushing toilets. For helium, medical and industrial uses far outweigh what goes into balloons.
- zymhan 10y ago
  I think your analogy is better than GPs, as you actually framed the issue in terms of proportional consumption.

zymhan 10y ago

Part of it is because the US government directed the reserve to sell Helium off to pay it's debt. We were using Helium decades ago though, I'm not sure why the price has always been cheap enough to justify using it as a party favor. One would think it would follow a typical supply/demand curve at some point.

Bartweiss 10y ago
The short answer is that the "we're running out of helium" scare stories have always been grossly misleading, for much the same reasons that we've been hitting "peak oil" for two decades now. Helium is available, as this story makes clear. But there's been enough of it recovered from mining & gas extraction that it hasn't been profitable to do direct helium-only exploration; this is also why it's cheap enough to use on birthday parties. As the helium reserve declines, and known helium sources dry up, prices will rise (are rising). That will drive an increased market for helium exploration. Presumably demand for balloons is much more elastic than demand for medical helium, so I think the answer is "we aren't that short on helium yet".

hangsi 10y ago

There is lots of it now, so the market price is low. The reason that this is a problem is that compared to other raw materials like oil, there is basically nothing that can be used as an acceptable substitute for helium in its scientific/industrial uses. Also, the prospects for finding new helium reserves is much lower than for many other materials.

randyrand 10y ago
It's going to run out eventually one day. So whats the point in trying to conserve it? You're just delaying the problem by a few decades. What good does that do? (serious question).
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  We can delay the problem far more than a few decades. A lot of scientific equipment is now recycling helium, for example. It doesn't typically get consumed like oil or natural gas (it is inert, after all) so we can get by with our relatively fixed supply if we are smart about it. Which is why some people get really upset about the utter squandering of He.

stymaar 10y ago

Because the willingness to pay an helium balloon to a kid is higher than in most helium use-cases. (=> The added value per volume is way higher). And there is also no - safe - cheaper alternatives. That's how free market works !

Bartweiss 10y ago

The market has been distorted since ~1996 by the federal decision to sell off the National Helium Reserve. That said, the "we're running out of helium" scare stories are misleading. The reason no one has looked for it directly (instead of as a side product to natural gas) is that it's been too cheap to make that profitable. Medical helium is an inelastic good, so discovery will increase as prices rise. Like the difference between "proven reserves" and the amount of oil actually in the ground, we are "running out" of helium only for the discovered-and-exploited version of helium.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

logfromblammo 10y ago

To make them buoyant. And to do the munchkin voice party trick. The same could be accomplished with hydrogen gas, but if you get one too close to the birthday candles, they can produce a spectacular fireball that might startle your party guests into soiling themselves. Human nature being what it is, that and the misattribution of the damages in the Hindenberg disaster to its hydrogen contents is quite enough to convince people to use the inert fossil gas instead of the reactive renewable gas. Methane and ammonia party balloons haven't caught on, either, probably due to explodiness and stinkiness, respectively.