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This is going to end up being a race to build the first helium-3 reactor on the moon, I just know it. After that happens - wow! We may well just enter the new

This is going to end up being a race to build the first helium-3 reactor on the moon, I just know it. After that happens - wow! We may well just enter the new Space Era after all. Trouble is, its also highly likely that it'll be the Chinese leading the way. If they didn't have such a violent history of human rights abuses as a nation, I'd be a little less concerned, but as it stands right now I can't see Chinese domination of space-based industry being a good thing. Then again, it might just solve the pollution problem if we can just push China up into space, and use clean technologies for deliveries back to us here on Earth. Here's hoping it happens within the next 50 years, anyway!

rory096 13y ago
Doesn't using the Moon's helium-3 presuppose that we're capable of creating energy-positive helium-3 reactions here on Earth? Though at the pace we're headed back to the Moon now, we're probably about on target to match the perennially thirty-year-off working fusion reactor.
- spiritplumber 13y ago
  We just have to ask the hot space Nazis for technical assistance.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- fit2rule 13y ago
  >>Doesn't using the Moon's helium-3 presuppose that we're capable of creating energy-positive helium-3 reactions here on Earth? I think the only thing stopping us is the place to do it safely, and maybe the Chinese have realized that doing such things as he-3 experiments on the moon is probably not so difficult, after all .. I mean, of all the countries on Earth right now who would benefit from this sort of 'clean energy' production, it'd be the one place on Earth that humans have utterly shit on. So I'm all for it, by the way, even if it involves hot space Nazi's ..
  - jerf 13y ago
    "Safely" is, if not outright trivial, at least a well-understood problem that is "easy" on the scale of energy generation problems. The problem is still commercial-scale net-positive fusion; I still haven't heard of anybody getting particularly close to that, with any known technology. (And I like to track the exotic ones, too.) There's less than no point to going to the moon to extract a fuel that we can't extract more energy than it took to collect.
    - fit2rule 13y ago
      s/he-3/something else then/ I highly doubt there is any reason to be on the Moon right now than preparation for total industrial exploitation. It may be that the Chinese space program is the only thing that will get China de-polluted.
Retric 13y ago
About 1 in 10,000th of earth bound helum is H3 which makes it several orders of magnitude cheaper to extract on earth than on the moon. PS: For scale the US reserve was over 1 billion kg of helium last I checked which works out to something like 100,000+kg of H3. At 20% effecency it takes ~260kg of H3 to run a 1GW power plant for 1 year. So, we might want to start mining H3 on the moon, but after getting 10+ H3 reactors running for 20+ years which is going to take a long time. However, I suspect where going to ignore designing H3 reactors for similar reasons as we are ignoring thorium basically the fuel is no the expensive part of nuclear reactors.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Send robot to moon. Robot #1: locate he-3! he-3 robot finds he-3 on moon! Send 2 more robots to moon. Robot #2: build he-3 reactor! reactor robot starts to build reactor .. Robot #3: build little factory for making: robots! robot-building robot builds robot-building factory .. reactor robot is finished! Just Plug In! robot-building robot is finished! Plugged In! ROBOTS in SPACE!! (Edit: to answer this - "the fuel is not the expensive part of nuclear reactors", yes the most expensive part of all this is doing it on Earth.)
  - bayesianhorse 13y ago
    If it was this easy, there should already be robots building He-3 reactors on the moon. No, not from Earth. From other civilizations that built van Neumann drones millions or billions of years ago!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  The obvious way to get He-3 is to synthesize it, by irradiating lithium with neutrons from a fission for fusion reactor. This is where commercial He-3 comes from today. Mining it on the moon is an idiotic attempt to rationalize its commercial value. In fact: lunar thorium is 3-4 orders of magnitude more abundant than He-3 [0][1], so if you wanted helium-3 from the moon, it would almost certainly be cheaper to mine lunar thorium instead, and use lunar nuclear fission reactors to synthesize it! Which doesn't fit in anyone's stupid sci-fi fantasy. For what it's worth, [0] estimates the total amount of he-3 in lunar regolith, over the entire surface, as only 2.4 million tons -- barely a fossil fuel. [0] http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2175.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2175.pdf [1] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n8/fig_tab/ngeo1225_F1.html http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n8/fig_tab/ngeo1225_F1...

rory096 13y ago

Doesn't using the Moon's helium-3 presuppose that we're capable of creating energy-positive helium-3 reactions here on Earth? Though at the pace we're headed back to the Moon now, we're probably about on target to match the perennially thirty-year-off working fusion reactor.

spiritplumber 13y ago
We just have to ask the hot space Nazis for technical assistance.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fit2rule 13y ago
>>Doesn't using the Moon's helium-3 presuppose that we're capable of creating energy-positive helium-3 reactions here on Earth? I think the only thing stopping us is the place to do it safely, and maybe the Chinese have realized that doing such things as he-3 experiments on the moon is probably not so difficult, after all .. I mean, of all the countries on Earth right now who would benefit from this sort of 'clean energy' production, it'd be the one place on Earth that humans have utterly shit on. So I'm all for it, by the way, even if it involves hot space Nazi's ..
- jerf 13y ago
  "Safely" is, if not outright trivial, at least a well-understood problem that is "easy" on the scale of energy generation problems. The problem is still commercial-scale net-positive fusion; I still haven't heard of anybody getting particularly close to that, with any known technology. (And I like to track the exotic ones, too.) There's less than no point to going to the moon to extract a fuel that we can't extract more energy than it took to collect.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    s/he-3/something else then/ I highly doubt there is any reason to be on the Moon right now than preparation for total industrial exploitation. It may be that the Chinese space program is the only thing that will get China de-polluted.

Retric 13y ago

About 1 in 10,000th of earth bound helum is H3 which makes it several orders of magnitude cheaper to extract on earth than on the moon. PS: For scale the US reserve was over 1 billion kg of helium last I checked which works out to something like 100,000+kg of H3. At 20% effecency it takes ~260kg of H3 to run a 1GW power plant for 1 year. So, we might want to start mining H3 on the moon, but after getting 10+ H3 reactors running for 20+ years which is going to take a long time. However, I suspect where going to ignore designing H3 reactors for similar reasons as we are ignoring thorium basically the fuel is no the expensive part of nuclear reactors.

fit2rule 13y ago
Send robot to moon. Robot #1: locate he-3! he-3 robot finds he-3 on moon! Send 2 more robots to moon. Robot #2: build he-3 reactor! reactor robot starts to build reactor .. Robot #3: build little factory for making: robots! robot-building robot builds robot-building factory .. reactor robot is finished! Just Plug In! robot-building robot is finished! Plugged In! ROBOTS in SPACE!! (Edit: to answer this - "the fuel is not the expensive part of nuclear reactors", yes the most expensive part of all this is doing it on Earth.)
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  If it was this easy, there should already be robots building He-3 reactors on the moon. No, not from Earth. From other civilizations that built van Neumann drones millions or billions of years ago!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
The obvious way to get He-3 is to synthesize it, by irradiating lithium with neutrons from a fission for fusion reactor. This is where commercial He-3 comes from today. Mining it on the moon is an idiotic attempt to rationalize its commercial value. In fact: lunar thorium is 3-4 orders of magnitude more abundant than He-3 [0][1], so if you wanted helium-3 from the moon, it would almost certainly be cheaper to mine lunar thorium instead, and use lunar nuclear fission reactors to synthesize it! Which doesn't fit in anyone's stupid sci-fi fantasy. For what it's worth, [0] estimates the total amount of he-3 in lunar regolith, over the entire surface, as only 2.4 million tons -- barely a fossil fuel. [0] http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2175.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2175.pdf [1] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n8/fig_tab/ngeo1225_F1.html http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n8/fig_tab/ngeo1225_F1...