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The more we use helium for stupid shit like this, the less helium we'll have in the future for MRIs and anything else that requires super-cooling. Forget peak
by knowtheory 15y ago
The more we use helium for stupid shit like this, the less helium we'll have in the future for MRIs and anything else that requires super-cooling.
Forget peak oil, we are, in fact, sitting at peak Helium, and selling that shit for children's balloons and crap like this.
(And for the historical context, Congress in its infinite wisdom, during the deregulation boom in the 90's, decided to mandate a price to dump all of the US's Helium reserves. As a result we are selling it at way below market rate, depleting a finite reserve of an element which we have no means of recapturing once it's released into the atmosphere. Quite a number of scientists have lamented this insanity, and begged the government to do something even if it is just allowing the rate at which the government sells Helium to float to actual market value, let alone get congress to reverse itself. Check it yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve )
- TeMPOraL 15y ago> The more we use helium for stupid shit like this, the less helium we'll have in the future for MRIs and anything else that requires super-cooling. While I agree with the rest of your comment, could you explain why do you think that airships are "stupid shit"? I'd say that the insane amount of fuel we use for transportation is a big waste of oil and I really look forward to see airships back in the sky, doing heavy lifting and maybe more.
- knowtheory 15y agoOkay, i should dial it back a bit. What they're promising is cool. Low infrastructure, high pay-load travel is indeed interesting. But they too are depleting a natural resource, just as petrochemical fuel usage does. And while we can find other storage mechanisms for portable energy (batteries, flywheels, hydrogen, what-have-you), there literally is no substitute for Helium cooling, by virtue of the laws of physics as we know them. This is not worth giving up cryogenics.