Fusor Forums

It looks as if Russia is challenging the U.S, in the realm of space again, and this time it looks like they're going to beat us. Russia has been looking for something to stabilize their economy, and it looks like they have finally found it. If this turns out to be as profitable as they claim, it may just be what Russia needs to become a super power again. With the access to that much energy, they would be able to do most anything the wanted. I guess it was a good choice to study Russian as a foreign language the past few years.

A new turn of resouirces grab contest over the world?

Good one John,

Yes, anyone who knows any space travel fans will know that this comes up all the time as a way to make money on travel to the moon and all the other things they (we?) want. It's not just Russia talking this, though they may be the most current in the news.

But -- has anyone ever proven they can get Q>1 with 3He as a fuel? If and when that happens, it will be some race indeed, and the real money and power (no longer just governments) will get into the fray.

Bloody nonsense. Waste of time for anyone to read that claptrap.

It's evidently difficult enough scooping up a few grammes of dust off the moon and bringing it back. How the bloomin' heck anyone is gonna sift through that and pick out the ppm levels of 3He and then bottle it! - forget moondust, someone's been on too much of the moon*shine*!

That has been the case in the past, but with the discovery of H2O on the moon, "moontravel" is liable to change drastically. Now all we would have to do is build the initial setup on the moon, and then we can manufacture our own fuel right there. Since the gravity is so much less, we could bring back copious amounts of the stuff at a fraction of the price. I'm not saying that this is sure-fire success, there are many ways in which they could fail, just that if they do it could greatly change the distribution of power in the world. There are many things that have yet to be worked out, but everyday we get closer to getting there.

Lunacy!

Well said! Lunacy indeed.

Just to add to this (and hopefully close it down), I note on wiki, it says "28 ppm of lunar regolith is helium-4 and 0.01 ppm is helium-3".

Now, let's think on this: If you cajole the He out of some lunar dust, then you still have to separate out one part in 3,000 of the 3He from the 4He. Compare with terrestrial 4He/3He which is one part in 10,000.

I wonder whether separating out 1:3k is *really* going to be that much easier on the Moon than 1:10k here on our comfortable and convenient, well-powered earth.....

....I wonder!!!!...Anyone want to make an observation on this??...

I attach the table from the paper that the wiki article links to. Note the scale - units of ppb!:

All this talk on lunar 3He is...just talk... and is just like all the other hair-brained stuff that is riding on the back of the oh-so-terrible energy crisis, and dirty-CO2-emitting-problem, we are supposedly having.

QRT