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I’m wondering how or if helium supply issues might make impact scalability of this. Yet another in a long list of reasons we should ban selling the stuff to the
by mattmaroon 4y ago
I’m wondering how or if helium supply issues might make impact scalability of this. Yet another in a long list of reasons we should ban selling the stuff to the public.
- bilsbie 4y agoAFAIK Natural gas extraction produces a whole lot of helium. We just have to bother to capture it. (Please correct me if I’m wrong. I read it on slashdot decades ago)
- Accujack 4y agoYou're correct. There's no shortage of helium, at least for several hundred years. There just aren't many gas wells capturing it because it didn't make any economic sense to do that until recently.
- jabl 4y agoThat is true, but OTOH if we're going to address climate change we can't keep on extracting natural gas like there's no tomorrow. So helium could become a pretty expensive thing.
- nraynaud 4y agoIt's right, and it's not expensive enough to have large scale recycling and conservation measures (some scientific labs have recycing systems already, but they are not the ones wasting the most). It's one of those cases where there is a shortage "at that price".
- SamPatt 4y agoWhat exactly would you prefer helium to be used for other than quiet, efficient heat pumps? Banning the sale of helium is foolish. The market is already responding to less supply, as it always does. We don't need people running around stopping innovation because they don't understand how price signals work.