4 ms·
Retirement homes in the lower gravity? And there is the helium-3 fusion dream. That's the purpose of so many recent scifi moonbases.
by sandworm101 5y ago
Retirement homes in the lower gravity? And there is the helium-3 fusion dream. That's the purpose of so many recent scifi moonbases.
- medstrom 5y ago70 wealthy retirees, each paying $100M annually.
- sandworm101 5y agoI assume that catering to those 70 Uber wealthy might increase cargo needs slightly. But it would cut down on family visits. The kids might pay to have grandpa sent to the moon.
- nsonha 5y agoLet's coerce them into spending that money, in fact what do old people need that much for, let's seize it for science
- sonograph 5y agoThe market for retirees who are willing to pay $100M annually to live in a pressurized bubble on the moon is maybe one or two, for only one annum
- cstross 5y agoGet back to me on 3He fuel mining in the regolith after (a) demonstrating a working 3He cycle aneutronic fusion reactor (hint: it's much harder than the D-T fusion cycle that we haven't got working yet, although ITER is supposed to demonstrate it), and (b) ruling out other aneutronic fusion fuels like, oh, proton-Lithium-7, or proton-Boron-11 ... which are only somewhat harder to achieve than 3He fusion, and which run on fuels readily available here on Earth. (My gut sense is that if aneutronic fusion is practical at all then it'll be cheaper to build more expensive reactors that can run on terrestrial fuels so cheap we use them for car batteries and as an insecticide, rather than slightly less difficult reactors that are fuelled by magic extraterrestrial unicorn sparkle-dust.)
- ben_w 5y agoI saw a blog calculate that regolith He3 was so sparse that even with a reactor to use it in, one would make more energy from purifying the metals, coil-gunning the purified ingots just past the L1 point so they would fall to Earth, and setting fire to the ingots. Or, entirely separately, by pointing the ingots at electromagnets and collecting the energy from the induced currents from electromagnetic braking. (I wish I could find the original and link to it. For all I remember it might have been you who wrote it).
- garmaine 5y agoHelium-3 from the moon will never be a commercially viable energy source. At best it might be captured incidentally as part of other mining operations and sold to research labs. There are just too many other fusion options that, while not as ideal, have fuels that are vastly easier to obtain.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoIt is likely that permanent low gravity will kill them even before boredom and depression from realization that the rest of their lives will have to be spent in those small confines. (Low gravity is extremely unhealthy. And even a relatively short 1-week stay in such conditions severely affects cardio muscles, so that super-healthy astronauts have to exercise for several hours per day to keep their heart in shape)
- jhgb 5y agoOne has to wonder if you couldn't eventually just build a large centrifuge on the Moon. Put a toroid on some kind of magnetic bearing and rotate it. It should be easier than on Earth anyway since you're supporting only one sixth of the weight of the structure. Even just as sleeping/recreational facilities, it still might be worth it in the long run.
- tsimionescu 5y agoFusion power plants already seem unlikely to be economically viable, given the huge radiation damage that the whole structure takes, requiring constant disposal of radioactive concrete (presumably via robots) and rebuilding the structure every 10 or so years. Adding lunar-mined fuel to the process seems to be going in the wrong direction.