Helium 3 and the moon

There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth. Has any progress been made with helium 3
producing energy and would this justify building an infrastructure on
the moon to mine and refine it? I think an article I googled from 2000
put a value of about 4 Billion US$ per ton on it. The side effect of
helping us be less dependant on oil once the process got going would
be great. Of course, if would mean huge infrastructure changes here on
earth as well, especially with automobiles.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Ball
http://www.booksnbytes.com/ 5500+ author pages,8000+ book reviews.
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David Ball wrote in
:


There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth. Has any progress been made with helium 3
producing energy and would this justify building an infrastructure on
the moon to mine and refine it? I think an article I googled from 2000

All fusion research I'm aware of focuses on deutrium/tritium. The
helium-3 reaction seems to require even hotter plasma and a more
complex reactor; I'm not sure the proposed reaction generating
electricity directly by charged particles has actually been demonstrated.

I wouldn't put any money into helium-3 mining stock, just yet.

--Damon

In article ,
David Ball wrote:

There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth.

It's not abundant, it's just slightly less vanishingly rare on the
Moon than it is here. For the kind of energy investment required to crack
it out of regolith, you'd be better off going out to the ice giants or
a cold, massive TNO.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

Damon Hill wrote:
David Ball wrote in
:


There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth. Has any progress been made with helium 3
producing energy and would this justify building an infrastructure on
the moon to mine and refine it? I think an article I googled from 2000

All fusion research I'm aware of focuses on deutrium/tritium.
snip
--Damon
A lot of research has been done at University of Winsconsin-Madison,
Fusion Tech Institute.
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/Research/he3_pubs.html
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/publist?which=wcsar

-kert

I tend to be far more interested in the proposal to mine the moon for the
raw materials to build Solar Power Satellites in HEO and then sending them
down to GEO. It too posits the moon as part of a solution to the problem of
additional electrical capacity (and leads to lunar development), but unlike
the case with fusion reactors, SPS is based on technology presently in hand.

http://ssi.org

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.

He3 was deposited byt he solar wind so since the planet Mercury is half
of the earth -sun distance you would expect it to have four times the
He3 density. So, If you plan to mine it automatically, it might make
more sense to mine it there.

James Nicoll wrote:
In article ,
David Ball wrote:

There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth.


It's not abundant, it's just slightly less vanishingly rare on the
Moon than it is here. For the kind of energy investment required to crack
it out of regolith, you'd be better off going out to the ice giants or
a cold, massive TNO.

The more distance from the sun, the lower the He-3 flux from solar wind.
It drops roughly with the inverse square.

The moon has an ancient layer of regolith. When a meteorite strikes the
moon it "gardens" the soil exposing new material to the solar wind and
safely burying old helium saturated dust. An impact on an asteroid, on
the other hand, would likely send regolith past escape velocity.

C.S. Lewis discusses this on page 204 & 205 of _Mining The Sky_.

By ice giants you mean Europa et al? I believe those are too geologicly
active to have an ancient surface like the moon. And their distance
reduces the He-3 flux as mentioned earlier.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

In article ,
Hop David wrote:


James Nicoll wrote:
In article ,
David Ball wrote:

There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth.


It's not abundant, it's just slightly less vanishingly rare on the
Moon than it is here. For the kind of energy investment required to crack
it out of regolith, you'd be better off going out to the ice giants or
a cold, massive TNO.

The more distance from the sun, the lower the He-3 flux from solar wind.
It drops roughly with the inverse square.

snip

By ice giants you mean Europa et al? I believe those are too geologicly
active to have an ancient surface like the moon. And their distance
reduces the He-3 flux as mentioned earlier.

That's Ok, neither source uses solar 3He.

An ice giant is a planet like Uranus or Neptune. They have a lots
of helium (~15% vs almost none for the Lunar regolith) and a tiny fraction
of it will be 3He. Uranus has an escape velocity of about 21.3 km/s, slightly
lower than Neptune's 23.5 (craploads better than Saturn's 35.5 or Jupiter's
60 km/s), plus it's closer to the Terran markets.

Large, cold TNOs can apparently hang onto helium.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

Hop David wrote:
James Nicoll wrote:
In article ,
David Ball wrote:

There was a lot of talk a few years back about progress in using
helium 3 to produce energy and having an abundance of it on the moon,
but it being rare on earth.


It's not abundant, it's just slightly less vanishingly rare on the
Moon than it is here. For the kind of energy investment required to crack
it out of regolith, you'd be better off going out to the ice giants or
a cold, massive TNO.

The more distance from the sun, the lower the He-3 flux from solar wind.
It drops roughly with the inverse square.

The moon has an ancient layer of regolith. When a meteorite strikes the
moon it "gardens" the soil exposing new material to the solar wind and
safely burying old helium saturated dust. An impact on an asteroid, on
the other hand, would likely send regolith past escape velocity.

C.S. Lewis discusses this on page 204 & 205 of _Mining The Sky_.

I think you meant John Lewis. Though Google reveals a
possibly-interesting book of correspondence between Arthur C. Clarke
and C.S. Lewis, the Catholic fantasist (author of 'Out of the Silent
Planet' and 'The Screwtape Letters') in which they debate the morality
of sending people into space.

On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 18:01:31 -0700, Hop David
wrote (in part):


The moon has an ancient layer of regolith. When a meteorite strikes the
moon it "gardens" the soil exposing new material to the solar wind and
safely burying old helium saturated dust. An impact on an asteroid, on
the other hand, would likely send regolith past escape velocity.

C.S. Lewis discusses this on page 204 & 205 of _Mining The Sky_.


Right after the part where he talks about mining Perelandra, eh? ;-)

Sorry; couldn't resist. The name you want is John S. Lewis.