5 ms·

If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people living there already. There is just nothing profitable in going to the moon. With f

by Iv 7y ago

If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people living there already. There is just nothing profitable in going to the moon. With fusion the opposite is true: we know energy is precious, and we know its market price. Just prove it can be done and commercialization will happen very quickly.

clarkmoody 7y ago
> If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people living there already. You're forgetting the most important piece of information in the economy: price. Since oil produced on Earth is cheap, compared with hauling it back from the Moon, we don't get any from the Moon. Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at all, that would be a different story.
- soperj 7y ago
  Hauling it back from the moon wouldn't be overly expensive. It'd be getting there in the first place that would.
- garmaine 7y ago
  > Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at all, that would be a different story. Which does exist, btw: helium-3 which is deposited by the solar wind and captured in cold traps on the lunar poles. It doesn't exist on Earth in any quantity, except artificially produced in nuclear laboratories. He3 fusion is easier to achieve and less dangerous to operate.
  - clarkmoody 7y ago
    Sounds like an excellent reason to go to the Moon :-)
    - dTal 7y ago
      Unlikely: "The helium-3 incantation" - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1 tl;dr the popularity of mine-the-moon-for-he3 meme is due to wishful thinking about sustainable moon colonies, and there's no analysis that suggests it's even remotely practical to do.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        That article is bogus. Let's take the outline points: "There are no fusion reactors." Well, duh. Fusion power isn't that far off though. Even Lockheed has a self-funded fusion power program being run out of Skunkworks, which isn't known for ivory-tower boondoggles. Even so, part of the point is that He3 fusion is different from D-T fusion, which brings us to... "Helium-3 fusion is even more difficult than regular fusion." No, He3 fusion ignition temperatures are higher than D-T fusion. But in every other way aneutronic fusion reactors are easier to build and maintain than neutron-generating D-T. They can be smaller, lighter, generate less radioactive waste, permit more efficient direct electrical current generation, and require simpler electrostatic containment than Tokamak-like designs. You can literally build one in your garage. "Helium-3 may be very difficult to locate and mine on the Moon" This was invalidated by LRO's data on the cold traps in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon (and MESSENGER's data on Mercury), which were then validated by simulations of the Moon's exosphere and interaction with the solar wind. The regolith in these craters is as much 40% volatiles by weight, of which a economically extractable fraction is He3 from the solar wind.
        pfdietz 7y ago
        The huge point against lunar 3He, even ignoring that it's two orders of magnitude less reactive than DT, is the difficulty of extracting it on the moon. 3He occurs in regolith in concentrations measured in the ppb. Even with beneficiation of fine fractions and efficient recycling of heat from the thermal extraction step, the energy requires are large, a significant fraction of the energy the 3He would produce when fused. So to power the terrestrial economy with 3He, you need to put a significant fraction of the terrestrial energy output on the moon to get the 3He. Power plants on the moon will be much more expensive than on Earth (because labor, materials, and supply chains will be more expensive there, even with cheap space transport), so this is unlikely to pencil out.
    - autokad 7y ago
      and build a fusion reactor =D
      - garmaine 7y ago
        Which is relatively trivial to do with He3, which is rather the point :) He3-He3 fusion produces no neutrons, so it requires no mass shielding. The energetic particles that result are electrically charged, so their kinetic energy can be directly turned into electricity, which further adds to efficiencies and avoids all the real engineering problems that come from coupling power generators to the fusion plasma in some way. The ignition temperature for He3 fusion is higher than the traditional D-T fusion, but it's a heck of a lot easier to achieve high temperature containment when you don't have to worry about things like shielding, and that shielding becoming radioactive from neutron bombardment. A great deal of the engineering challenges that plague D-T fusion simply don't show up in He3 fusion. However the way that you get He3 in large quantities, on Earth, is through D-T fusion. So He3 fusion being easier doesn't help much because to get the fuel you have to do the harder D-T fusion first... unless you go to cold traps on the Moon, or mine the atmosphere of Jupiter/Saturn.
        pfdietz 7y ago
        3He-3He fusion is probably impossible. The 3He fusion reactors being talked about would use D-3He, and would still produce neutrons. The two big issues with neutrons are damage to the reactor structure, and induced radioactivity preventing hands-on maintenance. D-3He could help with the first, but not the second. A D-3He reactor would still have to be maintained remotely, with robots. At best, it would reduce the radiation load on the robots. The need to maintain fusion reactors with robots reminds me of what they did at the hot cells at Hanford to ensure they could be maintained after being used for reprocessing. They required that the operators install all the equipment there using the remote handling equipment (mechanical waldoes, not robots). I'll believe the fusion people can maintain their reactors when they do the same thing.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Oil on the Moon wouldn't be hauled back to Earth, it would be used for an independent space based industry that produces things that are harder to do on Earth.
  - dTal 7y ago
    Not for energy, it wouldn't - good luck burning anything on the moon!
    - adrianN 7y ago
      I was thinking of fancy plastics. Perhaps bring-your-own oxidizer rocket fuel.
hairytrog 7y ago
You're missing the point. We know there are asteroids with price changing amounts of precious metals - we aren't mining them. Commercialization involves so much more than proving it can be done physically. And it also involves more than meeting a price in a padded environment. There are hurdles to jump that are totally disconnected from the price.
- bsder 7y ago
  > We know there are asteroids with price changing amounts of precious metals - we aren't mining them. Are there? As I understand it, the mass of the asteroid belt is primarily confined to just a handful (about 12) of objects, and everything else is so diffuse that it would never be profitable.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    I think they are going for the smaller ones anyway, given they are looking to fetch and park them closer for the actual mining. If you are patient and know some orbital mechanics, it takes surprisingly little energy to move stuff around up there. If you can automate it and be sending missions out regularly, sure it takes a while to get your first asteroid back, but after that you can have a steady supply.
  - duckymcduckface 7y ago
    Yes, there's a dumb amount of precious metals up there. If you were to bring back the contents of a single asteroid you'd crash the market. Here's a master's thesis on the topic: http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&current_base=GEN01&object_id=160774 http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&am...
    - bsder 7y ago
      Yeah, but if you look at that paper, platinum is extracted at roughly $20,000,000 per tonne--roughly the price of a single rocket launch right now. And we extract only 200 tons per year. That's a $20 billion market, but it's so sensitive to supply that nobody is rushing to open more mines.
pfdietz 7y ago
> Just prove it can be done and commercialization will happen very quickly. You seem to be saying "just show Q high enough and we're home free to commercially successful fusion power". But this is totally wrong. Fusion faces profoundly difficult obstacles to success even after the physics problems have been solved. These may be "mere engineering" problems, but engineering problems are perfectly capable of sinking a technology.

by Iv 7y ago

clarkmoody 7y ago

> If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people living there already. You're forgetting the most important piece of information in the economy: price. Since oil produced on Earth is cheap, compared with hauling it back from the Moon, we don't get any from the Moon. Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at all, that would be a different story.

soperj 7y ago
Hauling it back from the moon wouldn't be overly expensive. It'd be getting there in the first place that would.
garmaine 7y ago
> Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at all, that would be a different story. Which does exist, btw: helium-3 which is deposited by the solar wind and captured in cold traps on the lunar poles. It doesn't exist on Earth in any quantity, except artificially produced in nuclear laboratories. He3 fusion is easier to achieve and less dangerous to operate.
- clarkmoody 7y ago
  Sounds like an excellent reason to go to the Moon :-)
  - dTal 7y ago
    Unlikely: "The helium-3 incantation" - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1 tl;dr the popularity of mine-the-moon-for-he3 meme is due to wishful thinking about sustainable moon colonies, and there's no analysis that suggests it's even remotely practical to do.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      That article is bogus. Let's take the outline points: "There are no fusion reactors." Well, duh. Fusion power isn't that far off though. Even Lockheed has a self-funded fusion power program being run out of Skunkworks, which isn't known for ivory-tower boondoggles. Even so, part of the point is that He3 fusion is different from D-T fusion, which brings us to... "Helium-3 fusion is even more difficult than regular fusion." No, He3 fusion ignition temperatures are higher than D-T fusion. But in every other way aneutronic fusion reactors are easier to build and maintain than neutron-generating D-T. They can be smaller, lighter, generate less radioactive waste, permit more efficient direct electrical current generation, and require simpler electrostatic containment than Tokamak-like designs. You can literally build one in your garage. "Helium-3 may be very difficult to locate and mine on the Moon" This was invalidated by LRO's data on the cold traps in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon (and MESSENGER's data on Mercury), which were then validated by simulations of the Moon's exosphere and interaction with the solar wind. The regolith in these craters is as much 40% volatiles by weight, of which a economically extractable fraction is He3 from the solar wind.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        The huge point against lunar 3He, even ignoring that it's two orders of magnitude less reactive than DT, is the difficulty of extracting it on the moon. 3He occurs in regolith in concentrations measured in the ppb. Even with beneficiation of fine fractions and efficient recycling of heat from the thermal extraction step, the energy requires are large, a significant fraction of the energy the 3He would produce when fused. So to power the terrestrial economy with 3He, you need to put a significant fraction of the terrestrial energy output on the moon to get the 3He. Power plants on the moon will be much more expensive than on Earth (because labor, materials, and supply chains will be more expensive there, even with cheap space transport), so this is unlikely to pencil out.
  - autokad 7y ago
    and build a fusion reactor =D
    - garmaine 7y ago
      Which is relatively trivial to do with He3, which is rather the point :) He3-He3 fusion produces no neutrons, so it requires no mass shielding. The energetic particles that result are electrically charged, so their kinetic energy can be directly turned into electricity, which further adds to efficiencies and avoids all the real engineering problems that come from coupling power generators to the fusion plasma in some way. The ignition temperature for He3 fusion is higher than the traditional D-T fusion, but it's a heck of a lot easier to achieve high temperature containment when you don't have to worry about things like shielding, and that shielding becoming radioactive from neutron bombardment. A great deal of the engineering challenges that plague D-T fusion simply don't show up in He3 fusion. However the way that you get He3 in large quantities, on Earth, is through D-T fusion. So He3 fusion being easier doesn't help much because to get the fuel you have to do the harder D-T fusion first... unless you go to cold traps on the Moon, or mine the atmosphere of Jupiter/Saturn.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        3He-3He fusion is probably impossible. The 3He fusion reactors being talked about would use D-3He, and would still produce neutrons. The two big issues with neutrons are damage to the reactor structure, and induced radioactivity preventing hands-on maintenance. D-3He could help with the first, but not the second. A D-3He reactor would still have to be maintained remotely, with robots. At best, it would reduce the radiation load on the robots. The need to maintain fusion reactors with robots reminds me of what they did at the hot cells at Hanford to ensure they could be maintained after being used for reprocessing. They required that the operators install all the equipment there using the remote handling equipment (mechanical waldoes, not robots). I'll believe the fusion people can maintain their reactors when they do the same thing.
adrianN 7y ago
Oil on the Moon wouldn't be hauled back to Earth, it would be used for an independent space based industry that produces things that are harder to do on Earth.
- dTal 7y ago
  Not for energy, it wouldn't - good luck burning anything on the moon!
  - adrianN 7y ago
    I was thinking of fancy plastics. Perhaps bring-your-own oxidizer rocket fuel.

hairytrog 7y ago

You're missing the point. We know there are asteroids with price changing amounts of precious metals - we aren't mining them. Commercialization involves so much more than proving it can be done physically. And it also involves more than meeting a price in a padded environment. There are hurdles to jump that are totally disconnected from the price.

bsder 7y ago
> We know there are asteroids with price changing amounts of precious metals - we aren't mining them. Are there? As I understand it, the mass of the asteroid belt is primarily confined to just a handful (about 12) of objects, and everything else is so diffuse that it would never be profitable.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  I think they are going for the smaller ones anyway, given they are looking to fetch and park them closer for the actual mining. If you are patient and know some orbital mechanics, it takes surprisingly little energy to move stuff around up there. If you can automate it and be sending missions out regularly, sure it takes a while to get your first asteroid back, but after that you can have a steady supply.
- duckymcduckface 7y ago
  Yes, there's a dumb amount of precious metals up there. If you were to bring back the contents of a single asteroid you'd crash the market. Here's a master's thesis on the topic: http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&current_base=GEN01&object_id=160774 http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&am...
  - bsder 7y ago
    Yeah, but if you look at that paper, platinum is extracted at roughly $20,000,000 per tonne--roughly the price of a single rocket launch right now. And we extract only 200 tons per year. That's a $20 billion market, but it's so sensitive to supply that nobody is rushing to open more mines.

pfdietz 7y ago

> Just prove it can be done and commercialization will happen very quickly. You seem to be saying "just show Q high enough and we're home free to commercially successful fusion power". But this is totally wrong. Fusion faces profoundly difficult obstacles to success even after the physics problems have been solved. These may be "mere engineering" problems, but engineering problems are perfectly capable of sinking a technology.