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Is this a good use of helium? Is it non renewable? Because a certain amount is being lost during operation I would imagine.
by arresin 1y ago
Is this a good use of helium? Is it non renewable? Because a certain amount is being lost during operation I would imagine.
- black_13 1y ago[dead]
- rtrgrd 1y agoHelium is released from alpha decay (hence unlikely to run out in the near future) and is also obtainable from natural gas. That being said it is still non-renewable (in the sense that once the radioactive decays happen no more helium is released) and has quite volatile prices for some reason.
- foxyv 1y agoFor those who don't know, the helium we use for party balloons is mostly the accumulation of Alpha particles in petroleum reserves. When that helium is released it floats into the upper atmosphere and boils off into space. All other methods of helium acquisition are extremely costly and inefficient. This means that in the next couple hundred years more or less, humanity will run out of helium cheap enough to use for piddly things like MRIs and particle accelerators. It will essentially become the most valuable resource on the planet mostly extracted from volcanic gasses.
- Apocryphon 1y agoWe’ll be mining the Jovian planets at that point.
- foxyv 1y agoWhy? That would be like taking a flight to China to buy a gallon of milk.
- Apocryphon 1y agoWouldn't it be more like going to China to buy herds of cattle?
- credit_guy 1y agoHelium might be expensive, but there is some orher lifting gas that is not. Water vapor. It has about half the buoyancy of helium. It is a bit more complex to use it, because you need to a way to collect the condensation and boil it and send the vapor back. So helium can be used to kickstart the airship production, and once we are reasonably good at it, we can switch to water.