Could The Moon Power Earth? 279
Gatton writes: "Cool article at [Space.com which says that Helium-3 is] found on the moon in great abundance. Combined with fusion, it could be a clean alternate fuel source. Quote from article: "Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt." The article is a bit breathless and mumbly on details (So how do we fill up our tanks with H-3, exactly?), but tantalizing. And "combined with fusion," wouldn't a whole lot of things be interesting? Still, if the energy is feasibly recoverable, expect a different kind of corporate-sponsored moonshots.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Basically you'd be trading environmental friendliness with starvation of our farmlands.
-Michael
Better yet: create giant moon-driven crank! (Score:2)
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
We won't need this for a while (Score:1)
HF skip (Score:3)
As for beaming power to/from the moon: it will spread, and the beamwidth from the moon would be roughly the size of the earth. You'd have to cover the whole earth with antennas and diodes to recover the power. It'd make more sense to put the collectors in low earth orbit: the beamwidths then would be roughly football field sized. However, the stupid environmentalists (as opposed to the more common but less vocal smart environmentalists) scream because there's "radiation" involved.
Re:I'm so impressed. (NOT) (Score:1)
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:1)
Pluto.
Re:Alternate fuels (Score:2)
Luckily, solar cells are not the only way to harvest sunlight directly to energy. Solar powered turbines are in use, Stirling engines (unfortunatly long negelected) are starting to gain some small measure of popularity in research circles again...
Any prime mover can be used to harvest sunlight.
Personally, though, I think most gains will come in the form of more efficient ways to use the fuels we use now. We belch an awful lot of waste heat and fumes our of our cars for no reason. Now if I can just justify either the Honda or Toyota hybrid car this fall...
cool (Score:1)
Re:I'm so impressed. (NOT) (Score:1)
Actually, this concept has probably been around for more than a decade. I was in speech and debate in high school, and the topic for policy debate in the '90-'91 school year was space exploration. I can remember reading about this idea at the time.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:1)
Did you ever notice on your electric bill there are charges for "lost energy"? This is the loss of transmission through power lines. Batteries are rarely an effecient solution. Carbon-fiber would be more efficient, but still not efficient enough for heavy use. Those Terex Titan dump trucks out there still run Diesel, but as a generator for their four powerful wheel motors. The same would be more efficient for a car, as it doesn't have to race up and down during shifts, instead running smoothly to produce more power, and shunting excess to/from a flywheel.
BTW: though much work has been done to scrub outgoing emissions from power plants, coal burning plants still put more radiation into the air than do nuclear plants. This is part of the nature of coal. No big deal, sine coal plants have been along about as long as DC current and AC current systems. It only affects where they put the stacks: your nation's farmland.
Extraction (Score:1)
But you don't see fish driving limo's now, do you.
What can you conclude from this?
Re:Oh, great. (Score:1)
Science following computer game? (Score:1)
Dream on (Score:2)
The article implies that, to first order, the H3 is nicely dispersed over the entire surface of the moon. En lets suppose it's fairly close to the surface (since created by solar wind interaction) up to 1 meter depth. So, how concentrated is this stuff anyway? Concentration will dominate the extraction costs, right?
Moon surface = 3.6 * 10^13 m^2
Concentration = 1 million tons/(surface*depth)
Lemme see, thats barely 0.03 g/m^3. Extracting and shipping a 10 ton load of H3 to earth would require mining an area of 360 km^2(!).
And all this for a lousy $40 billion dollar revenu? If I recall correctly, solely putting a couple of people on the moon cost about $24 billion dollar 30 years ago.
Dream on.
Ivo
Re:These don't seem to make fusion impractical. (Score:1)
Well, in case you missed it.
Of course, you don't think radioactivity and radioactive waste is a problem, witness:
I keep wondering what the credible safety effort is for a ecological time-bombs that stay armed for a couple of tens of aeons. I haven't heard it yet, I have to say.
Just what I always wanted: a big block of hot metal in orbit, harboring a controlled reaction of huge potential, sending down an enormous amount of energy over miles and miles in some concentrated form through the ecosystem. Can't wait.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can call me a Luddite now. Thing is, I haven't been thrilled with the actual real social and ecological problems of our wonderful Atomic age, so I am skeptical to the thought that just throwing more technology at some fundamental problems is going to make things better.
Call me Joe Q. Public. This is who you have to deal with.
Re:Alternate fuels (Score:1)
Re:What about gravitation and other side-effects? (Score:1)
We just don't have the power to drastically change the mass, let alone the volume of the moon, significantly.
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
Re:Old knowledge (Score:1)
The real beauty of D-He3 fusion is that it is almost aneutronic. That is, the reaction produces very little neutron radiation, and the radiation it does produce is at a lower energy than that produced by D-T fusion. This means that less shielding is needed for the reactor, and long term damage to reactor structure do to transmutation is less of an issue.[D-He3 produces no neutrons itself, but once you toss D and He3 into a plasma, there are also neutron producing D-D reactions, albeit at a slower rate.]
[Note that the P-B11 reaction is really aneutronic, but its even harder to make work]
So, while it's nice to know there's He3 around it does us no good till someone irons out the considerable kinks in fusion reactor design.
Terminus (Score:1)
LEAVE THE MOON ALONE! (Score:1)
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
That's why some people are talking about fuel-cell motors. They work on gas, too, but they use it on a redos process that uses the entropy drop.
My point:
- Electric cars are FAR more efficient than actual combustion cars. Their batteries are, too
- While many power plants are only big combustion engines, they can also be made in an ecological way, and even the combustion ones are more efficient at it than ca motor car can possibly be
- You didn't proof your affirmations(links, links). Ok i also haven't, but you can ask any chemistry student you have around and he'll confrim.
- of course if you come up with some kind of proof, i'll believe you(no really, i'll move my lazy ass and search for a counter-proof)
HANDRe:Do the Freakin' MATH (Score:2)
The Earth on the other hand, is another matter.
The "Greenhouse" effect that Al Gore and others keep whining about is caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any time carbon comes out of the ground and into the air (volcanic activity, coal plants, cars, etc.) it makes the atmosphere retain more of the reflected solar heat from the ground.
We think that this can be partially slowed down by the increase in vegitation that will typically come about when you have higher CO2 levels, and eventually those carbon atoms may find their way back under ground. Studies are underway to confirm or deny the worries about greenhouse gasses, and the issue is not completely resolved.
On the other hand, if we were to start "importing" massive amounts of carbon from an extraterrestrial source (like the moon), and introduce it to our biosphere, the results could get interesting.
Unlike the alarmists on the left, I think the best way to deal with greenhouse emissions is not to relinquish fuel-based power (because such a tactic would keep the third world poor forever), but instead a two-fold plan: 1. Come up with machines that consume carbon gasses as quickly as our other machines are producing them. 2. Use more nuclear power, which produces harmless steam (and spent rods, but no plan is perfect).
Re:Minor problems. (Score:2)
This is the same guy who wrote Rocket Boys: A Memoir, aka October Sky. He is a real life NASA engineer that has helped train shuttle crews, so his info is legit and his premise is supposedly possible.
Today's wonderful fuel source for tomorrow. (Score:2)
Cold fusion, anyone?
Re:What about gravitation and other side-effects? (Score:2)
While removing that much mass (or indeed, any mass) would make a difference to the Moon's gravitational field, the effects would be far too small to be measured, yet alone to have any (noticeable) effect.
Don't forget that during the past few million years, the Moon has been hit by more than its fair share of rock, and its still "up" there.
Cheers,
Tim
Wow !!! (Score:2)
Slaine
Conservation on the moon (Score:2)
True, the moon doesn't have life on it, like the Earth does. But it's still a unique environment, one unlike any other in the universe. (How many other planets can you think of with a single, large moon?) If we charge right onto the moon and try to exploit it, we could damage it as severely as we have the Earth. We never know what we might want to use the moon for in the future -- and disturbing its natural balance might ruin future plans.
Now, this might seem like just another "gloom and doom" prediction. But given all the talk of terraforming in other planets we've heard lately (putting trees on Mars, water on Europa, etc.), it's not too early to start thinking about the repercussions of these plans. Just like in Star Trek, shouldn't our goal be to seek out and explore (and adapt to) strange new worlds instead of pillaging them and warping them to suit our whims?
Minor problems. (Score:5)
b) The shuttle can't go to the moon and back.
Other than that... sure, great idea!
--
The Moon isn't enough (Score:2)
Getting Helium 3 from the moon to power fusion reactors is a nice, short term way of providing mankind with a non-polluting energy source. It isn't weak like solar, wind, and geothermal power, it isn't polluting like fossil fuels, it isn't a huge radioactivity source like fission is or a small one like other fusion reactions could be. Its extraction is environmentally friendly, and it comes from places where there is no "environment" to speak of. And at current energy prices, each kilogram of helium 3 would be worth millions of dollars if we master fusion power.
But it's a nonrenewable resource. It comes from the solar wind, it doesn't embed itself very deeply in solid rock, and it "leaks". It might be profitably extracted from the moon, but it won't supply more than a few centuries of the world's energy needs, not once the third world consumption rises to that of fully industrialized countries.
If we want plentiful energy that will last us for thousands or millions of years, we need to look for a Helium 3 trap that has collected far more of the stuff than our moon. The outer planets have done this; straining out even the thin concentrations of He3 in their atmospheres would give us electrical power for a longer time than homo sapiens has existed so far.
Unfortunately, not all the outer planets are easy to pick up He3 from. Sure, you could drop a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter, but even if it wasn't crushed, we don't have rockets with both the thrust and the specific impulse to get it back again. For this and other reasons, there is one outer planet that stands out from all the rest for He3 mining. And when the fossil fuels start running out, the fissionable uranium starts running out, and the price of energy skyrockets, there will be only one place capable of supplying the demand.
That's right. A thousand years from today, humanity's energy will be supplied by the extraction of millions of kilograms of powerful gasses from Uranus.
Re:1 shuttle load enough for 1 year US energy need (Score:2)
Not to pick nits... OK, I am picking nits.
The gasoline example -- it's not an example of Einsteinian mass-energy equivalence. Gas burning is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear one, and E=MC^2 has nothing to do with it. In a chemical reaction, energy stored n chemical bonds is liberated. Matter is not destroyed, only re-ordered. All the elements stick around in the same quantities.
In a nuclear reaction, the difference in mass between what you start with and what you end with is where the energy comes from. That's where the famous equation is useful.
Re:Old knowledge (Score:3)
In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
Now, I agree with you on this one, but I'm glad you added the "seems to be" part. Therin lies the whole problem. We have a bit of a weakness for thinking we understand what we really don't. A key example of this is what is going on in the fields of North America with genetically engineered crops. Plants that looked completely benign and super-l33t in the lab are passing genes off to wild plants, letting fieldside weeds acquire resistance to Roundup and all those other brand-name herbicides.
Monarch butterflies are dying from the BT-pesticide-enhanced canola pollen, not from eating it directly, (which monarchs don't do), but from the pollen being blown onto milkweed plants which feeds migrating butterflies. Who would have seen that one happening? Nobody.
The caution that I would just like to voice is that "resources" aren't always "just sitting there waiting for us". Extracting oil from the ground is pretty much okay, except for what we do with it once we get it out, and sucking hydrogen off the moon would probably be okay too (supposing we found a way). But often, what we view as a resource "just sitting there" is actually doing a lot for us! Take trees in a river valley for example. Cut them down and you flood the river with silt from rain runoff and kill the fish. Seems obvious now, but nobody said anything until the 80's.
There's no money in sitting back and saying "Things are pretty good now, let's just figure out how we can fix some of our mistakes and maybe stop exploiting the third world". There -is- money in the latest miracle drug/product/crop/sodee pop. Yay capitalism.
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:5)
Went to a restaurant the other day. There was all this food on the buffet and the first thing I thought was I'll bet that food is there for a reason. I went hungry that day, not wanting to upset the delicate equilibrium of the restaurant environment and contented myself by soaking in the ambiance.
carlos
An end to road rage? (Score:2)
carlos
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
Real $$$ is being spent on solar energy research. Lockheed Martin is funding the solar cell research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I have a good friend working on this research, they are trying out ways to mass produces solar cells with an effeciency of 15%, they have 10% right now. The space program needs solar cells and therefore needs research to continue to be done, and so long as we allow for funding of the space program then real $$$ will be spent on solar energy.
As for hydrogen, they tried that in cars once. It worked really good, at least up until the first crash test, kaboom. They are having the same problem with some of the batteries today, like the lithium ion batteries (the material inside reacts violently with water and air) which is why you don't see really big ones being used for electric cars even though they have roughly the same umph per area of material as gas.
Sence when is helium considered a non-renewable resource? I guess that it is, but then so is everything in that case due to entropy. Helium is an extremely abundent resource, don't believe me then look up at the night sky and see all of those beautiful fusion reactors light years away.
There are several major problems with fusion, one is that Nuclear research is a dying field in the US. Next is that we are ~100 years away from having a fusion plant that is able to produce an abundence of energy, right now they can't even get them self suffecient. Third, it is clean, up until the metal used to contain the plasma that has been bombarded by extremely high energy alpha and beta radiation becomes radioactive, and structually unsound? Fusion is a long way away.
Fossil fuels are amazing things. High effeciency for a relatively stable material. Most of the alternatives are either unstable, ineffecient, or not ready due to either cost or the research isn't finished yet.
Batteries (Score:2)
__
Re:Fusion does work, but Not Cold Fusion (on Earth (Score:2)
ICF fusion is still being heavily researched, and new generations are being designed and built. The projects are extremely expensive, and with the poor administration at government labs, lots of the money is diverted from the projects. The reason ICF fusion is being researched, such as they were on beamlet, Nova, and soon NIF, is because it allows us to develop our nuclear weapons technology. The projects being funded have two main goals:
1. Develop new (and safer) nuclear weapons.
2. Help the Stockpile Stewardship, which aims to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. A major goal is to allow all nuclear testing to be in-lab, and thus stop blasts for data gathering and ot reduce aging weapons.
The public wants cheap energy, but would hate any nuclear plants. Fusion is still not clean (low-level waste) and currect generations still spend more money producing the reaction than they get from the energy produced.
Uh DUH (Score:2)
Re:Minor problems. (Score:3)
That's as may be, but NASA has said that fusion reactions are actually a bit easier to start and maintain at cooler temperatures with Helium-3, and that its rarity on Earth is what's kept scientists from considering it as a viable source of fuel. We may not be putting "Mr. Fusion" boxes on our cars within the next five years, but the technology may be a couple of steps closer this way. Check out this NASA webpage on Helium-3 energy production [nasa.gov], which outlines the possibility of building a commercial H3 fusion reactor in 20 years time.
b) The shuttle can't go to the moon and back.
Yeah, that's right! Neither can a 1946 Ford. That's why we wouldn't be going to the moon in one, let alone go back. We've got 20 years until we'll really need the stuff, and by then, things like NASA's X-33 RLV program [nasa.gov] will be just the thing we need for a job like this.
So you see? There is hope for humanity, after all!
/* Steve */
Electric cars (Score:2)
One of the biggest problems with electric cars is that all of the batteries are serious ground poluters. Without proper disposal of the batteries we will just have a different type of pollution.
As for corn type sources, methanol and ethenol, they have their problems as well. Although great when added to existing fuels, by themselves they are rather inefficient and wasteful. Someone posted more information on why it isn't the best idea to use corn on a post labeled as a 5.
I agree that hybrids are the best idea, unfortunately the Honda costs ~$19000, which as a student is out of my price range. I would love to get one and if it were closer to that of the civic I would. The gas milage is 61 for street and 70 for highway, with a 10 gallon gas tank... you do the math.
Co-generation designs (Score:2)
From a consumer point of view, these cars look a lot like regular cars -- you put gasoline in them and they go. However, there are some real advantages. One, the generator doesn't run all the time. So,for urban dwellers who spend time waiting for lights and traffic congestion, not having the engine idle is a big win in terms of energy consumption. Also, you can use regenerative breaking to recapture lost kinetic energy that otherwise would escape as heat.
Under test track conditions, internal combustion technology is still unbeatably superior. Under real life commuting conditions, it can be improved upon. How much? With current technology, the Prius gets gas mileage in the low 50s for city driving and low 40s highway with a 600 mile cruising range and top speed of 100mph -- not bad for a car which, while on the small side by American standards, is certainly not one of the tiny little rice-cookers of yesteryear. And, according to Toyota, it puts out only 10% of the emissions that an equivalent conventional car would. A 90% emission reduction and twofold (under some conditions) mileage improvement is nothing to sneeze at.
Lunar Solar Power (Score:2)
Can stay in the sun almost all the time
Are easier to reach for servicing
Are a more natural step toward moving technological civilization to where it really belongs
From http://www.spacelab.net/~rjnoonan/SpaceLifeScience s/bios.htm
The Lunar Solar Power (LSP) System collects solar radiant power on the lunar surface, converts the power to microwaves, and transmits multiple microwave power beams directly (or indirectly using orbital reflectors or retransmitters) to Earth receivers (rectennas). To achieve low unit cost of energy, the lunar portions of the LSP are made primarily of lunar-derived components. Construction and operation of the rectennas on Earth dominate the engineering costs of the mature LSP (less than 0.01 $/kWeh). This paper extends previous studies of the cost of LSP energy delivered to Earth (M$/GWeY and $/kWeh). Rate of return of the LSP is explored versus key parameters such as financing, rectenna costs, productivity of lunar operations, transportation costs, expendables per ton of product, and labor per unit of output. The relative costs of three LSP systems options are presented. LSP can provide the order of 1,000,000 GWe of low-cost, clean, safe electric energy to Earth that is independent of the biosphere. Implications for the U.S. and world economy are discussed. Finally, the role of LSP and its off-Earth production facilities are explored in establishing an Earth-Moon or two-planet economy in the 21st century.
David Criswell is director of Inst. Space Systems Operations and associate director of the Texas Space Grant Consortium. He received his Ph.D. in space physics and astronomy from Rice University. He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in physics from University of North Texas. He has worked for TRW Inc., Houston, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the University of California, San Diego, and the University Space Research Association. His current focus is post-graduate research programs between the University of Houston and NASA-JSC. His long-term interest is in space solar power and lunar industrialization.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Claims of its "efficiency" or "eco-friendliness" are the most base slight of hand.
Far more gas is used, and far more polution produced (fossil and/or radioactive) by electric cars than their counterparts powered by turning combustion directly into motion.
electric cars are actually a bullshit propaganda scheme in the first place.
Methinks you're trolling a bit, no?
Re:Fusion does work, but Not Cold Fusion (on Earth (Score:2)
These don't seem to make fusion impractical. (Score:3)
A couple of points here - First of all, if the many metres of shielding around your reactor absorb a substantial fraction of these gamma rays (and they'd better for the sake of the technicians), you can just run a heat engine off of it the way you do with a fission reactor.
Secondly, even if gamma rays aren't reclaimed and a lot of your energy escapes, this still looks a lot more mass-efficient than chemical energy sources - and we have a near-limitless supply of hydrogen and deuterium.
(d+d -> 3He+n or p+t) nice idea, but notice that neutron... (d+t -> 4He + n) this is an easy to produce reaction, but notice the neutron again. (t+t -> 4He +n+n) argh, two neutrons now.
And the problem with this is?
This would make fusion reactors as impractical as energy sources as fission reactors are now - which is to say, perfectly usable if you put in the required safety effort. And again, with a fuel supply that will last forever.
In principle, you could also run forever (or at least thousands of years) with breeder fission reactors taking in thorium and with reprocessing of spent fuel rods, but even "dirty" fusion is far preferable from a waste standpoint (only low-level waste produced, and no need to chemically reprocess it).
Still don't want a "dirty" fusion reactor on earth? Put it in high orbit (above geosynch). The fuel doesn't weight much, so refueling isn't much of a problem, and tidal drag will actually move it _farther_ away from earth as time passes. But I digress.
In summary, while fusion is unlikely to be a perfect energy souce, it is still quite usable IMO.
Virus.... (Score:3)
Mankind can't handle change, he just finds ways of doing the same things easier
If you listen very closely to what the Agent told Morpheous in "The Matrix", you will find the truth about our species...
Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Re:off-topic (Score:2)
Oh, great. (Score:5)
Let me guess: we're reading this sad little story because some scientists were tapped last weekend to think about energy sources due to the oil "shortage," right?
In the meantime, we could already power our nations automobiles with fuel made from corn instead of fossil fuels, and we don't.
We could already be spending real $$$'s on solar energy research... but, uh, not since the last oil crisis, eh?
And then there's hydrogen. Cleanest fuel known to man. There was some very promising research a while ago about producing hydrogen with engineered single-celled organisms. Gee... I wonder if those guys are getting enough funding? Duh.
Bottom line: energy research is a fucked business. Or is that energy research funding?
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:2)
---
seumas.com
Re:Stirling (Score:2)
They work now, they're just not quite optimal. The biggest issues seem to be surrounding manufacture rather than performance.
NASA has done some cool things with sealed stirling engine solar generators for satalites. I don't think they ever used it, but it had 1 moving part and was supposed to be quite efficient.
Pax.
Re:off-topic (Score:2)
I have amended my user profile to include one of my low priority e-mail addresses so we don't need any OT posts. Please use that if you feel the need to contact me.
Thanks.
Re:Oh, great. (Score:3)
Hydrogen is a very good and abundant fuel. When you combine hydrogen and fuel cell technology, you have the largest area of energy research that is going on across the global. The biggest problem is hydrogen's flammability. At stationary plants you could store it but anything mobile would be a bigger hazard than buring fossil fuels alone.
So now people are working on the next step, generating hydrogen 'in situ' (inside), so that you don't have to store it, and it only 'exists' for a short time. SOmeone suggested electrolysis, but you gain no energy after you break down water to get H2, then use that to get back to water. There is currently a big push to use methanol and ethanol from natural sources for the generation of hydrogen, as they are easy to burn and give a good hydrogen amount for cost and volume. However, when you burn hydrocarbons, including these two, you'll get CO2 (which isn't too bad) and CO (which is the killer). CO can damage the catalytic material of fuel cells and reduce their performance, therefore there is additionally research in trying to reduce CO via more reactions. In addition, which not in large numbers from natural sources, there is still the possibility of sulfur present, which does worse things than CO to the fuel cell materials, and the sulfur needs to be reduced to very small levels as well.
Thus, there's about 5 pieces of equipment that are being looked at for the automotive use: current estimates have these sized at about 200 L, but to fit them into a car, the best size is about 20L, so size reduction is a big issue as well. There's other issues as safety and cold starts that are being investigated right now. And these investigations go on across industry, academia, and government labs around the world, so there is certain a lot of research being done here - it just takes time, money, and typcially a passing brainstorm to make the next jump.
Solar power, on the other hand, has really only been shown to be effective in the long run for stationary sources; solar-powered cars still appear to be a long way off, due to collector size limitations on currect vehical design. Even with that, large solar installations cannot collect during cloudy days with the same efficiency as sunny days, and without a large number of panel and energy storage devices, the solar arrays only work well in places where the weather is cooperative (Southwest US). To the best I've seen, individual homeowners can benefit from solar panels to help heat water, but unless they grab an acre of panels, aren't going to be running their house off solar power for some time. Unlike fuel cells or other technology, there is only so much energy at maximum output that we can collect per sq ft of solar cell, and thus there's a fixed limitation there.
fusion dreams (Score:4)
sigh. fusion is a nice idea, but, well, lets look at the available reactions (p is a proton, d is a deuteron, t is a triton, 3 and 4 He are the two isotopes of helium):
(p+p -> d + neutrino+electron) is a weak interaction needing a W boson, has hence a really tiny rate, and fortunately for us, it keeps the sun from going poof like a flashbulb.
(p+d -> 3He + gamma): aw bugger, the energy runs away as light. (p+t -> 4He + gamma) bugger again.
(d+d -> 3He+n or p+t) nice idea, but notice that neutron... (d+t -> 4He + n) this is an easy to produce reaction, but notice the neutron again. (t+t -> 4He +n+n) argh, two neutrons now.
(d+3He -> 4He+p) ah bliss, all that energy in charged particles. pity that the rate for this reaction is relatively low. (d+d and d+t are orders of magnitude higher and we can't yet make them work).
And what is the problems with neutrons you might ask? well , neutrons from fusion do the same thing as neutrons from fission: they activate things and make everything nice and radioactive.
Fusion is not as clean as people would have you believe. I am a intermediate energy physicist and work closely with the above stuff regularly. Of course, all the above is a lie, since my grant requests requires me to say that I can make it work, and I don't want to lose my grad students due to funding cutbacks...
name witheld through shear cowardiceCan't we already breed the He3 in the reactor? (Score:2)
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:3)
Exactly. The weight of the Moon is keeping life on Earth intact. If we mess with that weight, all kinds of strange thing could happen. It's orbit could shift, tides could change, etc., etc. Granted, you'll have to take out an enormous amount of weight to make a dent in the moon's mass, but IMHO one should consider these tings.
On the other hand, the Moon is under constant attack of meteors, but so is Earth, so I think that's allright in the end. And perhaps we could dump some of our own waste there to keep the Moons weight in balance.
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Why there is no/little He-3 on Earth (Score:3)
<Blockquote>
When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited
</Blockquote>
These very same charged particles would hit the earth, but for a small matter of polarity (that is, the Earth's magnetic field repels all but a small proportion of the Helium-3 winging its way towards earth).
It just so happens that the moon doesn't have such a strong magnetic field (making this bit up here: someone please correct me as required), and more helium-3 can be "deposited in the powdery soil". (And the moon just happens to be close by... we could probably get our He-3 from them moons of Mars as required, but that isn't as much fun
As the speaker said to us: He-3 is great - except that there is (almost) no Helium-3 on Earth, and Fusion is required (also not yet working).
David Jackson
Why bring it home? (Score:5)
There are several advantages to this... First of all, to set up mining operations on the moon, you'd have to colonize it, more or less. The cost of colonizing it is nothing compared to the constant missions that would be required to bring enough H3 back to earth... It would be far cheaper to "convert" the energy from a plant on the moon, and beam it back to earth.
HF enthusiasts have for years, used a "moon skip" trajectory to gain more distance with their frequency bands. Why not reverse the trend, and set up an already proven power source; Microwave... In a controlled environment, a microwave beam can be used to heat water up to boiling, and presto chango, power steam/electric generators.
Another angle on this is "what kind of energy projectors will be available, when we can finally colonize the moon?" The answer is fairly unattainable at the moment, but we can project a bit...
During the 70's and 80's, the soviets built and tested several particle beams. Continuing research along this trend could yield a particle beam that can be sent to earth with almost no dispersal, and utilize ground collectors to change from one type of energy to another...
Lasers are getting bigger, and better too... As opposed to constantly aiming the beam in one direction or another, large mirrors could be set on gyroscopes and aimed to re-direct photons from the moon to any number of collector stations around the globe... AND DO IT 24/7/365. Hell, if you get a big enough laser, you could use one mirror at around half distance as a beam splitter, and distribute the photons to stations scattered around the globe. Mirrors can also be used to refocus the beam.
AND, once the moon is colonized, and powered, we can start to build Very Large Telescopes in some low G real estate, and place them on the dark side to escape IR and visible light interference from earth.
krystal_blade
Water and sunlight are cheaper (Score:2)
Fuel cell technology has been around for a while (it's used to generate electrical power on the Space Shuttle), but I suppose it's not in a lot of people's interests to use it. Fuel cells are pretty efficient, and Daimler-Chrysler announced this [jsonline.com] fuel-cell car last year which produces zero emissions. The company claims that by 2004 they'll have invested $1.4 billion in fuel cells. Sounds like the way forward to me.
I'm so impressed. (NOT) (Score:3)
After reading the article, I can sum it up as follows: whoever runs space.com called four universities and talked to four scientists. The first one said, "Yeah, you could probably get a lot of power out of H3." The other three echoed the same sentiment: "Mine the moon for H3? Uhhhh... I'm not going to... rule it out... maybe... 300 years from now, if we haven't got any other ideas... but boy, that's problematic."
So why was this <sarcasm>amazingly insightful</sarcasm> article written in the first place?
My guess is that it has something to do with the two banner ads and two other assorted ads on space.com's front page. As nice as a good, scientific discussion of helium 3 would have been, it doesn't exactly bring home the bacon.
Sigh.
Major Technical Hurdle (Score:4)
How in the world do we land a shuttle whith all that helium keeping it afloat?
Of course, if the floating problem can be overcome, imagine the impact on the party supplies industry.
Importing ???Carbon??? from the moon? (Score:2)
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Re:Why bring it home? (Score:3)
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:5)
Claims of its "efficiency" or "eco-friendliness" are the most base slight of hand.
With regular cars, you burn gas to create energy, and your car moves, right? But the gas is messy, dirty and dangerous (not to mention being about to run out in less than 100 yrs or so). Meanwhile, electric cars run on nice, clean electricity, right? No exhaust, no mess.
Unfortunately, that's bullshit. The electricity that powers your cute little golf cart was created by burning gas somewhere else. See those big smokestacks? That's you. But it gets worse. Because producing the electricity, distributing it, and storing it in your cars batteries are all extremely inefficient processes. Far more gas is used, and far more polution produced (fossil and/or radioactive) by electric cars than their counterparts powered by turning combustion directly into motion. Oops.
Meanwhile, there are a number of other known, tested clean, renewable alternatives now. Fuel made from corn being the most obvious. Some are even in use in other parts of the world, where "energy" is expensive and the powers that be are more distant. Why is it that out of all the alternatives, electric is the only one being "seriously" pursued? Because electric cars are actually a bullshit propaganda scheme in the first place.
Notice I haven't mentioned gas/electric hybrids, which aren't necessarily a bad thing; at least you get 60-80mpg or so. Honda is actually selling one right now, which I believe you can order...
Inertial Electrostatic Confinement History (Score:2)
For the real history of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, please read Distant Vision [barnesandnoble.com] by the wife of Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of IEC.
A few details left out of the Farnsworth story:
Robert Hirsch left Farnsworth, became head of the government's fusion project and dropped IEC. Bob Bussard (an early associate of Hirsch in the Atomic Energy Commission's fusion program and the most prominent recent advocate of IEC) in his letter to Congress in which he describes the history of the fusion program (and recommended my legislative reforms of the fusion program be passed into law) stated that the Tokamak was seen by the early founders of that program, including Hirsch and himself, as a political tool to create an Apollo-style mentality to acquire funding, rather than as a viable technological direction. Unfortunately, Hirsch did not turn the funding he acquired to support IEC during these early years of the Tokamak while he was in authority, and then left government service to work for Arco. Bussard had a partnership with the Mediterranean mafias via connections provided by Hirsch initiated at a meeting held at the Isle of Malta (I got this directly from Bussard -- how Hirsch had these mafia connections I don't know and didn't really pursue in my conversations with Bussard) but this didn't prove ultimately fruitful as it was tied up with the Atlantic City developments of that era (the 1970s). This was written up by one of Bussard's investors, Bob Guccionni of Penthouse fame. Finally, circa 1990, Bussard went back to Farnsworth's original IEC concept upon which Hirsch had cut his teeth as a grad student with Farnsworth and Hirsch seemed friendly to the retreat to the technology of his youth.
It is interesting that Mrs. Farnsworth, in the above liked book about her husband, seems to imply that IEC was actually close to _working_ in the late 1960s, and that her husband was increasingly excluded from these developments as success was growing nearer.
That Hirsch abandoned his work with Farnsworth on IEC technology to become head of the AEC's Tokamak fusion project to the exclusion of IEC technology is certainly deserving of reflection -- particularly in light of his decades-later reassertion of IEC's value as a technical direction over Tokamak.
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:2)
:)
troc
Re:1 shuttle load enough for 1 year US energy need (Score:2)
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
but seriously, there is more to it. you present a somewhat naive take on the situation. I believe the benefits of a large scale moon operation far outweigh the trouble caused by using conventional fuels. Sure we could pour research dollars into corn powered cars, but how will that spur materials sciences? nuclear physics? astro-navigation?
I suppose we could all spend the next thousand years driving our corn powered cars to coffee houses next to granola factories and vegan 'cheese food' silos... But I would rather get my Orbital Hilton reservations confirmed, thank you, and get there via fusion powered lear plane, constructed of the finest Bolivian strip-mined titanium. All on my meager salary. This is the promise of another space race.
Not to mention the huge amount of inertia going on in the gas powered car scene. By your stern use of the bold tag it would seem you think the Auto mfctr's can just start selling electric cars exclusively if they want? What about the gas stations? what about the 4 million parts & service companies servicing the auto industry directly? or the 8 million companies servicing consumers? or the auto manufacturers? what about all of their employees? and those employees families? what about the millions of people driving vintage early 80's pos cars cause they can't afford new ones? do they still get to buy gas?
sheesh.
Maybe you could try to think in terms of science and economics before you sputter off about corn cars next time. After all, those are the only things that matter.
Re:Oh, great. Hydrogen... (Score:2)
Hydrogen is rather abundant on our planet... In fact, 2/3's of it is TEEMING with it.
And it's not that hard to get to. You don't need genetic engineering, or microbiology to obtain hydrogen... All you need are the following:
2 Tanks (if you want to hang onto it) Solar Cells Big Screens made from a non-corroding conductor BIG SALT WATER TANK some wire.
I did a project back in an independent study science class where I used the same materials listed above to perform "electrolosys" on water.
You pass electricity through the conductive solution, with the + on one screen, and the - on the other. (yes, DC works best, if you want separation)
Stuff the screens into the tank, and connect to the solar cell. Fill your "tanks" with the water, and place them directly over the screens.
On the + side you get oxygen. On the - side, you get hydrogen. Burn the hydrogen, and you get presto chango... Water.
Solutions like this have been around for years, but nobody wants to develop it because it requires extensive investments in solar power to perform.
Of course, that's not to say you couldn't build a large field of solar panels to power a town during the day, and shunt some of that power off to split water during the light hours, then burn the hydrogen at night to provide power (and water for the next day) at night.
krystal_blade
Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:3)
When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface.
So the helium 3 on the moon isn't there due to some sort of ecological balancing act, as the moon really has no ecology, its just steller crap that has accumulated on the surface. I, too, worry about the ramifications of large scale modifications of planets and their satellites, but in this case as the helium 3 is only within the first few meters of the lunar surface, so the only real concern that I have with mining the moon for helium 3 is the actual process used to do so; i.e. what kind of byproducts are left over from refining the soil for its helium 3? But as for the actual removal of it from the moon, well, I look at the moon much as a giant asteroid, the only real difference in it being that it has enough gravity to collect garbage that passes by. If they were to discover that the moon had some sort of ecology that could be affected by mining helium 3, then that would be a different story, but all indications so far point to the moon being nothing more than a really big, dirty asteroid. Of course, if the process of removing the helium 3 meant removing a noticable percentage of the moon, I would have a problem, even if the surfers would be in heaven.
Deo
Re:Virus.... (Score:2)
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Re:What about solar orbital? (Score:2)
To transmit the solar energy to Earth in this way would require huge microwave downlinks that'd be rather powerful in nature...... (hence the SC2000 mentioned previously where the beams sometimes go awry and burn stuff)
Top 5 reasons to transmit energy to the Earth via microwave beams.
5. Set them up around your country as a really cool defense shield against migratory birds, they'd arrive pre-cooked
4. When your corn crop is ready to harvest, get the beam moved over and viola - instant popcorn.
3. No more bloody mobile phones in cinemas and free heating.
2. Melt the polar ice caps - and the bloody skips-eating kids from the uk tv ad. when they come to stop you.
1. And the top reason would be for free reheating of your leftover chinese takeaways from the night before
yeah ok, they were pants. Sorry
troc
Re:1 shuttle load enough for 1 year US energy need (Score:2)
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Re:Virus.... (Score:3)
Bah. That idea (and it isn't exactly original to A. Smith, is, well, fucked. "Other" species don't naturally achieve equilibrium, they do the same thing we do: they consume resources (food sources) and reproduce as much as possible. There's no such thing as equilibrium in nature. Different populations are always on the rise or on the decline. If a population's environment changes (for the worse) too rapidly, it may well die out. (and the same can happen to an entire species if all the populations die off together.) Improved environment will allow the population to thrive. Humans are far more adaptable and creative than any other species, and have spread across the globe, altering environments to suit our immediate needs. (and altering them for the worse over the not-so-immediate term) Maybe we'll wind up killing off too much of the other life on the planet, and wind up extinct ourselves, but its the same thing that any other species does, just on a global scale.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:5)
But Wang found that emissions of sulfur oxide (a key cause of acid rain), and particulates would actually increase. (The health effects of these ultra-fine soot particles are now under increasing suspicion.)
The story for carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's taking heat for causing global warming, was more complex. At slow speeds, electric vehicles greatly reduced carbon dioxide; the effect was less dependable at higher speeds. And as you read them, remember that all calculations of pollution trade-offs will depend on the age and pollution controls of the gasoline autos and the electric-generating plants in question.
Clean? That depends on where you live... (Sound Familiar?)
To urbanites, electric vehicles truly produce"zero-emissions," Wang says, since they move all pollution to the power plant. Overall, he suggests, electric vehicles would benefit the environment by reducing hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, and thus ground-level ozone. And while more particulates would be produced (particularly if the electricity came from coal), Wang observes that most electric generators are "away from populated areas, so there would be less population exposure."
Electric vehicles also offer a way to use "green electricity" (from solar, wind and geothermal sources), as clean transportation power.
Finally, electric cars may be less energy-intensive: A recent study by Ford Motor researchers found that electric vehicles with experimental sodium-sulfur batteries would use 24 percent less energy over their life cycle compared to similar gasoline cars."
information source [wisc.edu]
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
You are clearly in space already. Lucky for you I live to be trolled by amateurs. You are actually ignorant enough to even mention electric cars. Please read this to be enlightened on the notion of electric cars. [slashdot.org]
Meantime, I believe the benefits of actually having any happily functioning humans on this planet in 100 years outweigh this "oh what will happen to all the poor gas station attendants" bullshit. You know, we've had a lot of bullshit jobs in this country over the years, from horse buggy mechanic to medical leech collector to asbestos installer. And do you know what? They went and fucking found other work. Lucky for you. Do you have any idea how fucked up our energy situation is right now?
It could all be different. But no - some fucking people just never learn.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:3)
Furthermore, electricity production can, in principle, be made ecologically friendly. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, etc. And, of course, fusion (in the future). Try this with your SUV.
So while electric cars are not necessarily eco-friendly today, they may well be in the not-so-distant future.
But I agree that other alternative energy sources must be researched, too.
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Re:fusion dreams (Score:2)
Li-7 + H-1 --> He-4 + He-4 + 17.3 MeV(kinetic energy)
Li-7 + H-1 --> Be-8 + 17.2 MeV(gamma rays)
Be-8 --> He-4 + He-4 + 0.1 MeV (kinetic energy)
Neutrons are a problem. But they are not impossible to deal with.
You might be strangling my chicken, but you don't want to know what I'm doing to your hampster.
Re:Evil Energy Companies (Score:2)
Of course, there is clean energy in use today. Unfortunately, almost all commercial energy is dirty right now, some of it very dirty. Of course, someday, we may discover a way to produce clean energy cheaply and plentifully. I do not, however, think shipping hydrogen-3 from the moon will be part of the plan. Just a hunch, though.
Your points are very good and well taken. Thank you.
Re:Why bring it home? (Score:3)
Re:Water and sunlight are cheaper (Score:2)
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Old knowledge (Score:5)
The "combined with fusion" thing is not exactly a cop-out. What they meant was that using He-3 as a fuel for fusion can produce quite a bit of energy, and He-3 is a very useful catalyst for fusion. Why? Same reason that deuterium is beneficial - because you're bypassing some of the steps in the p-p chain (the process that the Sun uses to make helium out of hydrogen). Basically, you can lower the energy threshold of sustainable fusion reactors if you already have tritium, deuterium, and Helium-3 present, because now instead of reaching the energy threshold of just one reaction (proton-proton -> deuteron) you can reach any of the steps in the p-p chain immediately. It's similar to chemistry - you can speed up a reaction if you have some of the intermediary products already available.
Second comment: what the heck are people complaining about using the moon for energy? You think solar power is better? Really? You really think it's free? Just like wind and water power is free, huh? Solar power is great - on a small scale. Try to use it for the reasons you want to use it for - like powering the *world*, for instance - and you might have a problem. All that solar energy was meant to go somewhere - the air and the ground. There's a definite solar thermal cycle, and stripping out energy can affect it. On the scales that people typically use it for now, like powering lights or scientific instruments, it's fine. Even maybe for a few supplemental reactors. But if you honestly wanted to power the world with it, you better start realizing that power generation will always hurt the environment. Always. Period. End of story.
So, then, the answer is, why the hell do we care what we do to the moon? It's *dead*. It's static. It's unchanging. Study it for a while until you mostly understand it, and then you're free to do with it what you want. Helium-3's a good idea - very good in fact. And yes, when we run out, we move on to another planet. Is this a problem? No. These planets were static. They weren't changing. We're not *affecting* anything that was important to begin with.
Here's a bit of reminder before I get flamed for being an anti-environmentalist or something strange like that. Life is destructive. It's entropic. But who cares? That's the point of the entire friggin' universe.
Interesting scientific point. Entropy is mathematically identical to the concept that Shannon (yah, the modem guy) called 'information', and it's quite appropriate. Entropy is information - it's the universe saying "Something happened here." So when people say that entropy always increases, that's correct - because things are happening - information is being generated. Thermo tries to tell us that this is a 'bad' thing - they call entropy chaos, or disorder. That carries a connotation of evil or wrong, which is not right - it's simply a way of saying "something happened here."
So we have two choices. We can avoid energy use entirely, and calmly sit here on the planet, maybe migrate when it dies, and do nothing. Might have to destroy most of Nature too. Nature is rather entropic... eats up a lot of power and just turns it into heat. Or we can do what living beings were intended to do. Live. Use the fuel that the universe gave us - just, try to make it last as long as possible. Not infinitely. We can't live forever, and we shouldn't try to.
Bottom line - there's nothing wrong with using up resources. They're there to be consumed, or else they'll just sit there forever. The real goal is to use them intelligently. In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
Re:Minor problems. (Score:2)
Ya see that big fiery orb in the sky?
Bye Bye Craters, Hello Paradise!!! (Score:2)
After several passes with truly massive mining equiptment [komatsu-mining.com] the entire surface of the moon will have been run through grinders, slurry heaters, leech processes, and redeposit. The redeposit process will have to lay down the remainders without stirring up any "dust" so controls will be tight and mistakes intolerated.
There will be a strict condition imposed by the UN that a mining compnay or national venture may only extract usefull elements like h3 and aluminum and carefully place all the rest of the materials back on the surface. The risk of flying into a 'dust cloud' of micrometeorites in a lunar transport will be high enough without sloppy mining messing things up. The remainders might be left in large mounds, but this is only necessary if processing stations are immobile. In the reduced gravity of the moon, the entire processing plant could be mobile, even including the spaceport where the ferries load. This seems most practical and elegant. Now the factories are moving around like cows in a pasture. leaving their remainders in a smooth ribbon behind them.
The claims will be debated and marked in the UN. some nations might go rougue, political tensions will rise, perhaps skirmishes here and above, but things will settle down pretty quick as companies move in and tax proceeds are made available.
Back on Earth, there will be much debate over the effect the redistribution of mass on the moon is having over the tide and weather patterns. Coastlines will change, species will die, but at the same time, the power to do something about it will be ours. With that much pure fuel for fusion at our disposal we could take back the climate, by simply running massive underwater heaters in strategic locations. Advances in other technologies will allow us to construct ecological sanctuaries with stable populations of every species, including many 'extinct' ones. I guess the real question is, can we get to the paradise before hell catches up with us?
Meanwhile, the moon has been churned hundreds of times in a crop rotation pattern that's running out of time and facing ever growing demand. Enterprising organisations will move to set up very large sail-like collectors facing the Sun and surrounding the earth and the moon to collect H3 as the moon runs dry. They will also double as conventional solar collectors as refined to that date. This will probably be deemed more important than astronomy, but at no time will anyone be permitted to obscure direct sunlight to the earth or interrupt communications. Off the top of my head, the likely metephor is that of the Earth blooming into flower petals. Kick ass. The sails will be strung together with clearly marked conduits running to beam generators pointing at stations on the surface, brimming with so much power that they are visible for thousands of miles, and drastically changing the look of sunset and sunrise as the stations must always remain positioned along the terminator...
I could live with this future, smooth moon and all.
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm just a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta...
Re:Feasible Lunar Energy (Score:2)
Re:Feasible Lunar Energy (Score:2)
Feasible Lunar Energy (Score:4)
No, not laundry detergent. That's not funny.
Who cares about the moon, there's energy on Mars! (Score:2)
Of course, if an anti-matter based reactor existed, we could just get dirt from the Earth. But then, if cold fusion existed, it would hardly be necessary to go to the Moon to get fuel.
Re:Minor problems. (Score:3)
> Ya see that big fiery orb in the sky?
That's just the demo. The ones you can really buy aren't worth shit.
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Re:Conservation on the moon (Score:2)
Of course you're right, but let's keep a sense of proportion here. We're talking about abusing a deserted rock, in the interests of preserving the home of the entire supply of known critters. If there were no other considerations, sure, save the moon. If it'll keep the Earth's environment from getting yet further trashed, I have to vote: screw the moon.
Just like in Star Trek, shouldn't our goal be to seek out and explore (and adapt to) strange new worlds instead of pillaging them and warping them to suit our whims?
Again, you've got a theoretical point. But sing along for a moment:
We're not likely to seriously mess up the supply of unique planets out there, and if we're going to see any of them, we'll have to fiddle with them somewhat. If this idea actually panned out, getting that much energy from a mere 25 tons of material would be a large benefit for relatively little fiddling.
Forget using Helium isotopes for fuel. (Score:2)
Helium's biggest two assets are:
Re:I'm so impressed. (NOT) (Score:2)
I find it funny that we geeks, who are so fond of Sci-Fi, are so quick to assume the future. Sure space exploration/navigation was monumental, but it failed quickly as the driving forces dried up. Personally I have little faith that we'll have any manned mars missions any time soon. The "Because it's there" attitude is getting harder to swallow when you look at the ever increasing price tags. The lunar-landings were not even such an argument; they were instead, an international pissing contest.
The only thing that makes sense about main article is that if we "were" to colonize the moon a hundred years from now, then we'd have a potential source of energy (assuming we ever prove fusion to be reliable).
Re:Minor problems. (Score:2)
I just finished reading Homer H. Hickam's Back to the Moon. This book of fiction... [...]
Gah! Ick! That had to have been one of the worst pieces of shite that has ever been written. We reviewed it as crap on our radio show (The SciFi Show), and we've had callers since then just bitching about how bad it is.
Okay... as fiction, the first half just suffers from horribly bad characters and unlikely events (if you think NASA is really so lax as to let a shuttle get hijacked, let it fly when they *know* there are irregularities with the communications, and there are people unaccounted for last seen on the pad)... but the latter half (featuring hackers dressed in SCA garb and Klingon warrior outfits controlling AI super robots from the far side of the moon) is just utterly worthless crap. And if all this isn't enough, for you consiracy fans out there, he throws in a Illumnati like secretly controlling group. Trilateral Commission my ass... the concept is that they are about to make all nuclear research illegal across the globe, so the Helium 3 (called firedirt, IIRC)needs to be gotten NOW, by any means necessary.
Now, having said all this, I will reiterate what I said in the review. As a fantasy it only really suffers from bad dialoge and horrible character development. As a comedy, it just isn't funny enough. But it is billed as hard science fiction, as a potential real event, and as such uses the real names of people and departments in NASA, and supposedly is possible. The pseudoscience is abysmal, and is frankly an insult to the professionals in both the space industry and science fiction.
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Evan
Some electric cars can recharge batteries when... (Score:2)
Moreover, producing energy from fossile fuels always produces heat in addition to the useful mechanical (or electrical) energy (this is a consequence of the 2nd thermodynamical principle). In a car, this heat is basically lost energy. In a stationary plant it can actually be reused for useful purposes ("cogeneration plants": they provide heating for nearby towns or industries in addition to electricity). Not to mention that it is easyer to finetune energy efficiency in a plant where you have basically no space constraints than in a car.
Do the Freakin' MATH (Score:5)
Come on people, DO THE FREAKIN' MATH before you start spouting off!
Secondly, the moon is a lifeless ROCK! You could strip-mine the surface of the moon, spread the chat back over where you mined when you were done, and NOBODY COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE! I'm all for protecting the environment, but there is no environment on the moon!
Re:1 shuttle load enough for 1 year US energy need (Score:3)
The Helium-3 atom is not in and of itself drastically energetic. One could not fill a bomb with He-3 alone and expect it to do anything more drastic than make the target talk funny. The excitment expressed in this article is due to the high degree of effeciency of a Fusion reaction, which can be attained with He-3.
Traditional energy sources, such as hydrocarbon combustion, only convert a tiny percentage of the available mass to energy. As shown by the famous equation E=mc^2, even a tiny amount of mass converted to energy results in quite a bit of energy. If you doubt that, go light a can of gasoline on fire. It's hot. In a comprable He-3 fusion reaction, a much greater (but stil small) fraction of the total mass is converted into energy. Thus, a small amount of He-3 could theoretically provide the same power yeild of a much greater amount of gasoline, or natural gas.
Something's wrong here... (Score:2)
Alternate fuels (Score:3)
Yes, research is being done on using photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen (again, harvesting sunlight), and research is being done on how to store the hydrogen in a fashion that would allow you to fill your tank and have reasonable range, but it isn't here yet! And it IS being funded quite well, it's just a very hard problem and takes time.