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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Apr 21, 2016 - 10:06pm PT
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however. meanwhile we can be content to be raped by the utility giants.
Who the heck do you think would be mining this stuff besides these folks?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 21, 2016 - 11:53pm PT
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Might be wrong, but I believe Ed is involved with fusion research in some capacity or with the National Ignition Facility in general.
I personally don't have much faith that either inertial (NIF) or magnetic (Tokamak) confinement fusion technologies will ever produce utility scale power, but would be interested in hearing Ed's perspective on the matter. I was once a believer decades ago mainly due to a small private company in Ann Arbor called KMS Fusion that had a working compact inertial confinement rig (like truck size) - it sure seemed like it had great promise at the time.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 22, 2016 - 07:22am PT
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Who will be mining this stuff besides "these folks?" My prediction is a completely new group of Robber Barons. "These folks" will be engaged trying to stop new development and protect their little domains. I'd put my bets on the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc., the younger and more intellectually gifted businessmen with foresight.
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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Apr 22, 2016 - 07:31am PT
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"Imagine what the mining pricks have done to the Earth, and now these idiots want to play on the Moon...
... wow! "
All so you can have, well, literally everything in your life...
Yup. We are pricks.
Name one thing you are surrounded by that isn't produced with mining. Even your home grown lettuce...
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Apr 22, 2016 - 07:40am PT
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Hi Healy. Here's a brief aside on the KMS project in Ann Arbor which you mentioned. The director was the late Keith Brueckner, my partner for the Salathe and a long time fixture at Mt Woodson. Keith had a condo in Palm Desert, between Idyllwild and JT.
As I understood it, the idea was to zap little tiny deuterium filled glass spheres with a laser.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Apr 22, 2016 - 08:11am PT
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Imagine what the mining pricks have done to the Earth, and now these idiots want to play on the Moon...
... wow!
From a species-centric perspective getting off this blue rock and effectively colonizing other rocks should be priority #1. Like our cousins, staph bacteria, we shouldn't rely on just one pimple that is popped easily enough.
Of course to really find a suitable new blue rock we'll need the ability to travel and navigate while moving faster than light.
There are so many things to do besides kill each other on this rock.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 22, 2016 - 08:22am PT
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Mankind has always thrived and grown on the Frontier. Those of us involved in climbing are continually looking for new worlds to conquer--new routes, new areas, new mountain ranges. When we cease to be explorers, we cease being human...
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Apr 22, 2016 - 08:32am PT
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Well then there's a whole lot of non-humans pretending to be our "leaders"...
Ideas and efforts like this remind of me of reading about the space-race. Before my time but it sure seemed like a better way to blow enormous amounts of effort and time than digging more holes in the ground and pretending to control various parts of the earthen crust by drawing lines on them.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 22, 2016 - 08:59am PT
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Well, Broke, this is quite intriguing but I suspect some people have run the development
costs and I suspect they are quite daunting if not nigh insurmountable. As that big solar
company that just filed for Chapter 11 protection found out it's all about cash flow.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 22, 2016 - 09:26am PT
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Reilly-
I suppose they might have done so in the past, but now that SpaceX and Blue Origins have been developing reusable spacecraft--especially $65 Million booster stages--the cost accounting will change accordingly.
A large part of the development costs of doing such an undertaking could easily be recovered with the first successful cargo of He-3. I like the idea because it's an adventure as well as a business opportunity.
If we don't do it now, the Chinese will beat us to the well of golden opportunity. Best solution is for the major players to band together and do it for all humankind. Nah; that won't happen, as it makes too much sense for the politicians to comprehend.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 22, 2016 - 09:39am PT
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I think the earth-based development costs would far outweigh the rocketry.
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Apr 23, 2016 - 08:19am PT
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Dave are you using an internet mine detector? A guy can't slip an anti-mining post in edgewise round here
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2016 - 11:22am PT
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Use of the Moon's resources will not be extracting anything other than regolith imbedded gasses from the Solar wind. It isn't exactly "raping" a planet, when the extracted product is a gas, and the treated soil is robotically returned to the same trench from which it is "mined."
For mankind's future, the sooner we can quit squabbling over resources here on Earth and begin utilizing absolutely clean energy from Fusion power, the more assured our destiny will become. Wars here on Earth are generally over resources and who gets to use them; oil is the biggest case-in-point. We can utilize the resources of the Solar system off-planet-Earth, in addition to the Moon's Helium-3; the asteroid belt is filled with mineral wealth that boggles the imagination. Helium-3 is rich in the atmospheres of the gas giant planets of the outer Solar System, although Jupiter presents too deep a gravity well and humongous radiation bands to exploit. Saturn is the next step in "mining resources," and robotic, nuclear powered robotic drone prospector vessels could be
gathering He-3 by the end of the 21st century.
Spending money on the exploration and utilization of space-based resources could mean the end of wars here on Earth. Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has described the wealth of societies as the level of access to metallic resources. A single asteroid could make everyone here on Earth "rich" when fully utilized.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 23, 2016 - 02:10pm PT
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From a species-centric perspective getting off this blue rock and effectively colonizing other rocks should be priority #1.
As I've said before, never gonna happen.
As far as mining or doing pretty much anything on the moon that requires operating machinery goes, I still think the biggest technical obstacle is dealing with the insidious nature and effects of regolith (moondust) which remains a huge if not the primary challenge to operating there.
NASA’s Dirty Secret: Moon Dust
NASA'S PLAN TO DEAL WITH PESKY MOON DUST
What a Little Moon Dust Can Do
Stronger Than Dirt
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2016 - 04:06pm PT
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Healyje-
That's strictly an Engineering problem and is not insurmountable. As my plant chemical engineer always used to tell me: "All it takes is time and money." Period.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 24, 2016 - 02:58pm PT
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SPACEFLIGHT UPDATE!
Technical difficulties cause a rare launch scrub of a Russian built Soyuz ST-A, carrying a Sentinel-1 satellite for the ESA. Launch is rescheduled tomorrow. The launch was being conducted by Ariane Aerospace from French Guiana.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 24, 2016 - 05:12pm PT
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D + ³He → ⁴He + p
isn't a competitive candidate for nuclear fusion because the rate of reaction (the "reactivity") is very small for low ion temperatures.
The primary reason is the repulsive force of the 2 protons in the ³He nucleus on the one proton in the D nucleus. For both DD and DT fusion there are only one proton in each nucleus, and the repulsive force is a factor of 2 lower.
The DT fusion has an added advantage of a nuclear reaction resonance which greatly increases its reactivity.
We routinely shoot capsules with D ³He as well as DD, DT and TT fusion fuels. DT has the highest "yield" by orders of magnitude.
³He + ³He fusion probably happens, but the coulomb suppression is a factor of 4 over hydrogen nuclei fusion.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 24, 2016 - 08:47pm PT
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Ed-
Could you give a brief explanation of the significance of the units of your graph? I'm not a Nuclear chemist, but my training was in Physical Chemistry. You mention low ion temperatures, but relative to what? Please expound! The bottom line question: does Helium-3 have any utility at all in the Fusion power project--now or in the future?
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