Helium-3 Article in USA Today

Enjoy:

H.R. 5382, "The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act", was passed by
the Senate this evening by unanimous consent.

Sorry. That should read:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

"Mark R. Whittington" wrote in message
oups.com...
Sorry. That should read:


http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

This is fine, but I wish the proposal to build GEO solar power satellites
from lunar resources got nearly as much attention as this one. Unlike with
fusion, the technological building blocks for SPS are in hand. The problem
with commercial fusion power is not that experts estimate it to be about 30
years away, it's that they've been fairly consistently estimating it to be
30 years away for about 50 years now.

--


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

Mark R. Whittington wrote:
Sorry. That should read:


http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

A clarification. There's a reference to nine tons of oxygen, water, and
so on and six tons of hydrogen for every ton of helium 3 that be be
extracted from lunar soil. That should have been nine thousand tons and
six thousand tons respectively. I regret the error.

Mike Combs wrote:

The problem
with commercial fusion power is not that experts estimate it to be about 30
years away, it's that they've been fairly consistently estimating it to be
30 years away for about 50 years now.

If you judge fusion by examining actual facts instead of sound bites,
you'll see we're much closer now than we were then. They *weren't*
30 years away from working fusion reactors then, not with this universe's
physics.

Paul

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Mike Combs wrote:

The problem
with commercial fusion power is not that experts estimate it to be about
30
years away, it's that they've been fairly consistently estimating it to
be
30 years away for about 50 years now.

If you judge fusion by examining actual facts instead of sound bites,
you'll see we're much closer now than we were then. They *weren't*
30 years away from working fusion reactors then, not with this universe's
physics.

Paul


Well, we and they know that now but that is what was being predicted
from 30 to 40 years ago. Of course, we are much closer now than we
were then.

Actually I have not read any recent speculation giving time lines, perhaps
the physicists have become a bit leary of making predictions.

I also note that even if the physicists find something that looks as if it
might be practical there may be a lot of very difficult engineering to make
it productive. It also would probably require some significant investment
and available money always has competition.

I am much in favor of continued research in fusion but I am not
expecting any quick breakthoughs. Of course, I might be surprised
because I am not up on how much work is currently in progress and
how well it is funded.

Mike Walsh

"Mark R. Whittington" wrote in message
ups.com...

Mark R. Whittington wrote:
Sorry. That should read:


http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

A clarification. There's a reference to nine tons of oxygen, water, and
so on and six tons of hydrogen for every ton of helium 3 that be be
extracted from lunar soil. That should have been nine thousand tons and
six thousand tons respectively. I regret the error.


If what you say is true concerning the ultimate source of these potential
resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar system's
near moon-like asteroids, and even comets, potentially yield fairly large
amounts each of these same resources? Per its physics, its conditions, how
the moon attained (attains), and retains, these resources should also apply
to these other smaller, somewhat similar potential sponges. Unlike the Earth
and the other planets, our moon, and a heck of lot of the solar system's
asteroids, as well as possibly most comets, essentially should have
texture(?) make up more comparable to [better absorbent and better massively
retentive in original form all that which is absorbed] sponges. ????

Brad

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
The problem
with commercial fusion power is not that experts estimate it to be
about 30
years away, it's that they've been fairly consistently estimating it
to be
30 years away for about 50 years now.

If you judge fusion by examining actual facts instead of sound bites,
you'll see we're much closer now than we were then. They *weren't*
30 years away from working fusion reactors then, not with this universe's
physics.

I'd actually be surprised if we weren't less than 30
years away from commercial fusion right now. We have
made an awful lot of progress just in the last decade.
Now it's not really so much a matter of funding fusion
research enough but of funding it correctly.
Indications are that even the massive boondoggle
International Tokomak Experimental Reactor (ITER) will
work as advertised, though otherwise will almost
certainly be a waste of money in terms of actually
pushing forward fusion technology. If we can keep the
focus on increasing understanding of fusion plasmas and
containment systems then we ought to be able to
acquire the knowledge in terms of reactor design,
reactor materials, reactor operation, etc. that are
necessary for workable fusion power to become a reality
within a fairly short time frame at an extraordinarily
reasonable cost.

For so long the focus has been on just making it work
and maintaining a burning plasma. The result of that
has been the ITER showpiece, which will almost certainly
burn plasma with a fair amount of power left over.
What we really need to do now is shift our outlook from
one of proving it can work to one of looking to how a
real, working reactor is going to run. And acquiring
the knowledge through experimentation of figuring out
what the best ways of designing and running commercial
fusion power plants are likely to be.

In article xhYud.487627$wV.108211@attbi_s54,
glbrad01 wrote:
If what you say is true concerning the ultimate source of these potential
resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar system's
near moon-like asteroids, and even comets, potentially yield fairly large
amounts each of these same resources?

Not comets -- they don't spend much time near the Sun and hence won't have
major amounts of solar-wind volatiles.

For asteroids, it's unclear. The Moon has a considerable advantage in
having enough gravity to hang onto impact debris, and as a result it has a
thick regolith which is "gardened" enough by impacts that it should all be
more or less saturated with solar-wind gases. Asteroid regolith layers
are likely to be considerably thinner, although we have no good data on
this yet.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
For so long the focus has been on just making it work
and maintaining a burning plasma.

Duh. If you can't "make it work" and "maintain a plasma", then you
cannot have a functional commercial reactor.

The result of that has been the ITER showpiece, which will almost
certainly burn plasma with a fair amount of power left over.

laughs If ITER's performance were a certainty, it would indeed be a
showpiece. But, as you yourself say above, it's not.

What we really need to do now is shift our outlook from one of
proving it can work to one of looking to how a real, working reactor
is going to run.

Oddly enough... That is *exactly* what ITER is intended to do.

Once they've proven basic operations, runs of weeks of fusion are
planned. As Rickover did with MK 1, those runs will serve to explore
how the machine will behave over time. (And a damn good thing he did,
he discovered a number of surprises both pleasant and unpleasant.)

And acquiring the knowledge through experimentation of figuring out
what the best ways of designing and running commercial fusion power
plants are likely to be.

We'll never do that if we don't build reactors in the first place...

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL