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Isn't Xenon infamous for being ridiculously expensive? It's the best general anesthetic by a mile since it's a noble gas, but we don't use it because the cost w
by Etheryte 2y ago
Isn't Xenon infamous for being ridiculously expensive? It's the best general anesthetic by a mile since it's a noble gas, but we don't use it because the cost would be absurd. While the amounts used here must be small, and you're going to be stacked if this is how you're approaching Everest, it must still cost a small fortune — and turns out it does:
> One session of xenon gas costs $5,000 per person for a 30-minute session.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- readthenotes1 2y agoAccording to the article, 154,000 USD. That may be considered ridiculously expensive, noble, absurd, and or a small fortune to some, but to others it's relatively irrelevant, on the order of supersizing your fast food order.
- vasco 2y ago> The cost of xenon is roughly $10 per liter. For comparison, helium, another noble gas, costs around 10 cents per liter. Argon and neon cost about $2 per liter each. From another link in the comments: https://tripsitter.substack.com/p/xenon https://tripsitter.substack.com/p/xenon
- killjoywashere 2y agoah, rich people sports...
- dugditches 2y agoPretty sure your source is wrong. And that helium is 10_$_ a liter not 10¢. As helium is much, much more expensive than argon.
- eesmith 2y agoYou likely meant to write 'xenon' there, not 'helium'. FWIW, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon has > Because of its scarcity, xenon is much more expensive than the lighter noble gases—approximate prices for the purchase of small quantities in Europe in 1999 were 10 €/L (=~€1.7/g) for xenon, 1 €/L (=~€0.27/g) for krypton, and 0.20 €/L (=~€0.22/g) for neon,
- adrian_b 2y agoPerhaps the helium price is right, but argon is certainly much cheaper. That price of argon might be per cubic meter, not per liter. The price of argon is essentially zero for the argon itself, which forms one percent of the air. What you pay is only the energy required to separate it from dioxygen and dinitrogen, e.g. by liquefaction and distillation. EDIT: Googling now, I see prices for argon around half of dollar per kilogram. A cubic meter of argon has slightly less than 1.8 kg, so the price of argon is at most 1 $ per cubic meter. A liter is one thousand times less than a cubic meter, so the price per liter is one tenth of a cent.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoI buy a big tank of argon periodically for TIG welding. I don't remember what I last paid but it was cheap. Decades ago I used helium but it's much too expensive for hobby welding now.
- everyone 2y agoHow does Xenon act as an anaesthetic if it's a noble gas and chemically inert?
- pfdietz 2y agoIt's not chemically inert (1), but even if it were it could still disrupt cell membrane function by physical effects, like dissolving into the lipids. (1) For example, a mixture of xenon and fluorine, when exposed to sunlight, makes crystals of xenon difluoride.
- groby_b 2y agoI feel like fluorine isn't allowed in a "chemical inert" statement ;) You can, after all, even make Argon react with it - HArF. Only Neon and Helium are so far in the "only reacts theoretically with fluorine"
- rcxdude 2y agoIt's not completely chemically inert, but the actual mechanism that makes it work as an anesthetic is unknown (as, unnervingly, are most general anesthetics).
- ada1981 2y agoNitrous Oxide is inert in the body as well.
- kens 2y agoPretty much anything that dissolves in lipids will work as an anesthetic, with effectiveness depending on how well it dissolves. This is why nitrogen under high pressure can cause nitrogen narcosis while diving. This is also why spot removers like ether and chloroform work as anesthetics. Also why nitrous oxide is used for whipped cream; it dissolves in the cream and makes it foam up. Since xenon is somewhat soluble in lipids, it somewhat works as an anesthetic even though it is chemically inert. The big question is why being lipid-soluble makes something an anesthetic. That's not known, but probably it messes up ion channels in the lipid membrane or something. See the Meyer-Overton correlation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaesthetic_action#Lipid_solubility-anaesthetic_potency_correlation_(the_Meyer-Overton_correlation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...
- Aurornis 2y agoThe prices in the article are what the company is charging for their services, not the gas itself. The gas itself is under $100 per liter depending on purity.
- Etheryte 2y agoThe depending on purity is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, to the point where I would say it's misleading. I don't know the price for xenon off the top of my head, but for a comparison with nitrous oxide, food grade is generally between 99% and 99.9% pure. If you want medical grade, the threshold is 99.99% pure or better, depending on what you're doing. Those additional nines are what drive the price up, plus the fact that someone signed off on it with their name. Food grade is cheap, medical is expensive. No one is going to go up Everest with anything below medical.
- Aurornis 2y ago> The depending on purity is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, to the point where I would say it's misleading. Not really. The range of prices doesn't change by multiple orders of magnitude. At small quantities the cost of the ancillary equipment might be as much as the gas. I guarantee you they're not buying $5000 of pristine gas per client. One of the hardest parts of dealing with Xenon is getting the last little bits of Krypton gas out. Very small doses of Krypton gas are inert and not really a health issue. The research grade Xenon has to be higher purity because many experiments rely on it being the only gas present. > No one is going to go up Everest with anything below medical. Companies who do Everest expeditions vary greatly. There's a lot of history of bad behavior among companies around Everest. Just because it's expensive and their clientele is wealthy, you shouldn't assume they're operating according to the highest standards. There's a long history of badly behaving companies around Everest.
- andrewflnr 2y agoBut why would it even be bad behavior to use "food grade" Xenon? They extract it from air, and they're going to mix it with air again.
- karmakaze 2y agoSo topping Everest is now becoming a pay-to-win title.
- vishnugupta 2y agoIt has been for a while now.
- brailsafe 2y agoIt's actually to the point where even though I have to assume it's still quite challenging and arduous compared to like a day hike in the cascades or something, it's for me to not just mentally discount it, like buying high fashion stuff or a fancy car with a normal income. As in, a friend tells me they went and bought a Porsche, and I'd be like "sweet dude", because it's still probably neat, just not something I'd be terribly enthusiastic to explore; just a vibe of buying clout or something because it's the highest point and requires quite a lot of extra money. The base camp trek would be kinda neat though.
- vishnugupta 2y agoI have similar thoughts. The base camp trek was high on my list but then I've heard that it has become a rich people's village and I lost interest. While on this topic, one book I really enjoyed is Into Thin Air [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air
- vasco 2y agoMany people had your though so everest base camp trek is also full of people and queues at choke points.
- brailsafe 2y agoI mean, for me that alone would be enough to just pass on it. I'm sure there are more interesting, more secluded trails that are just are intrinsically novel if I wanted to visit that range. I'm chill with a bit of traffic on popular trails, but that also kill the vibe I'd imagine. Hope it was still fun though.