[kublikhan]

KaiserJeep - It's not so much rejecting the proposal because it is a clean, carbon free source of electrical power. But because it doesn't make sense, at all. The economics don't make sense. The technologies needed don't exist. And there are better alternatives here on earth that are infinitely more viable than lunar HE3 mining.

Lunar Helium-three (3He) has been widely promoted as a killer ap for Lunar development; supposedly offering aneutronic fusion to an energy-starved world, helium three is pitched as something that is in short supply on Earth but common on the Moon, apparently the ideal raw material around which to justify the investment needed for Lunar development. In actual fact, lunar 3He is a complete chimera; it is not common on the Moon, it cannot deliver true aneutronic fusion, it is subject to replacement by terrestrial materials, and in fact our civilization is incapable of using it to generate energy at all.

Abundance
Lunar 3He reserves are pitched in such a way the seemingly large absolute quantities of 3He on the moon; phrases like “enormous reserves” are tossed around to describe the estimated millions of tonnes of 3He potentially trapped in lunar regolith. What boosters fail to highlight in press reports is that this vast reservoir is stored within a much larger amount of regolith; recovering one tonne of lunar helium-three would require processing ten million tonnes or more of regolith.

False Promise
3He is pitched as a clear thermonuclear fuel. Unlike deuterium-tritium reactions, helium-three-deuterium reactions produce no neutrons. The catch is that deuterium can fuse with itself; while half of the D-D reactions produce no neutrons, the other half do produce neutrons. This means that while a fusion reactor using helium three would be cleaner than one using deuterium and tritium, it would still produce neutrons and so cannot be said to be a clean reaction; admitting to the neutron issue would mean admitting that the same mitigating technologies required for D+T reactors would be required for 3He+D reactors, although admittedly to a lesser degree. 3He+D is also harder to fuse than D+T. This means the payoff for power used to induce fusion will be smaller and the cost per kilowatt-hour produced smaller than for D+T fusion; reduced neutron emission comes at a cost.

Terrestrial replacements
There is a potential fusion reaction that is more truly aneutronic than 3He+D, one that uses boron-eleven; 11B +p yields helium; unfortunately like the 3He+D reaction, there will be side-reactions, in particular 11B reacting with alpha particles, that will produce neutrons but these will produce somewhat fewer neutrons overall than the side-reactions for 3He+D. Like 3He based fusion, 11B fusion is more difficult to initiate than D+T fusion and so will be more expensive than D+T but 11B has one great advantage over 3He; boron is a reasonable common substance on Earth and about 80% of it is 11B. Unfortunately from the point of view of a space proponent, the ease of acquiring boron on Earth is counterproductive; if you can order the stuff from a mundane chemical supply company, there is no need to go into space to get it.

We don't have commercial fusion power plants, not even D+T fusion power plants
This is the giant cephalopod on the kitchen table that lunar 3He boosters have to ignore because without fusion plants, it hardly matters if the reaction the plants would use produce an abundance of neutrons or a dearth of them. Without fusion generators, there's no demand for 3He, lunar or not, as a fusion fuel. Without fusion plants, there's no market for lunar 3He as a fusion fuel. Sadly, a thorough audit of the power-generating facilities of the world reveals a complete lack of commercial fusion power plants. This is because we have currently lack the know-how needed to build commercial fusion power plants. Not only are we currently incapable of building the devices on which the lunar 3He scheme is utterly dependent but it does not seem very likely that we will acquire the required skills any time soon; although research is ongoing commercial fusion is at best decades away, perhaps longer. ITER, a showcase project for fusion research, is only intended to produce more energy than it consumes rather than producing energy cheaply enough for sale; commercial exploitation of the information produced by ITER will have to follow the complete of that program in 2038 and will presumably involved D+T reactions, not the far more difficult D+3He reactions. It is arguably possible that most of the people reading this will be dead before commercial fusion is developed.

Helium-3, Lunar Chimera

[GHung]

Just what humanity needs; more energy so we can continue to wisely exploit the rest of the planet's resources and expand our population.

What was it that got us into this mess in the first place? I suggest we deal with (attempt to survive) the current centuries of baked-in carbon overshoot (and our deluded relationship with Planet Earth) before we smoke that pipe.

[hvacman]

The moon! Duh, why didn't we think of that before! Green cheese consists mainly of energy-dense hydrocarbon fats and could be rendered/refined to liquid fuels....

[Timo]

With you KJ it is always the same melodramatic and strange dichotomy. Either we put all our eggs into space travel (clearly an impossibility, given the limits of combustion propulsion and unproven nuclear technologies) or we die from an infection of 30 billion wet, slimy, fecund parasitical humans. No such thing as family planning?

Ahh! But you've completely ignored the recent NASA revelation of microwave propulsion. They can't yet explain how it works, only that it does work. Details of their success are irrelevant. Now, the only test left is to see if their success can be replicated in the vacuum of space!

But seriously, though. Time is running out for us humans here on earth. We're at that turning point right now of scaling down our consumption of earth's resources at the same time of vastly increasing demands. We really have no choice but to get off this rock and move elsewhere if we don't want to dwindle as a species. SpaceX is building reuseable rockets, exponentially decreasing the costs of space travel. (Fuel is the cheapest part of space travel.) I'm all for mining the moon for He3. Maybe this is the missing ingredient for functional fusion here on earth. Maybe, but we won't know until we try. My only concern is decreasing the mass of the moon, thus extending its orbit away from earth. Or maybe i have that backwards. Dunno, but decreasing the weight of the moon might badly affect earth's tides.

[efarmer]

I was a child in the 1960's who was completely absorbed and enamored and inspired by the space program. I remember The Cuban Missile Crisis and practicing hiding under my desk in Catholic grade school full well realizing that a Soviet nuclear strike on St. Louis would sublimate me above or under my desk anyhow but everybody else was doing it, so what the heck...

The space race was not salvation in a technology dress at all, it was simply an opening for people to dream and act big, and to realize that the smartest people on earth had created nuclear fire delivered by chemical rocket propulsion that could destroy the usefulness of the planet that gave us all life, and that it was not a trivial issue but not the end of possible human advances and endeavors. We instead dreamed and created things that chemical rockets and all the technology related could do besides murdering people wholesale.


When you are intelligent enough to realize the scope and direness of the challenges facing humanity, and it leads you to become king of the doom hill and defend bleak doom from all possible comers, I submit your wonderful mind is poisoning your marvelous existence on this incredible, harsh, yet exquisite, planet Earth.

[Timo]

Efarmer, i'm with you in your perspective, and i even went to public school. We hid under our desks, too, but that was just to become invisible after we shot a rubberband at the techer. But more to the point, while i do agree with you that we should be able to live here on earth within our means, humanity appears incapable of doing that. So, either we take the knowledge and technology that we've accrued in our time on this blue planet and multiply elsewhere in God's universe, or we die off and stagnate as a species. Personally, i'm torn with that decision. Fortunately, it's not mine to make, either.

[GHung]

Yeah, Timo, if God had meant for us to travel in space, we would have been born with a space suit and a warp drive up our ass.

[Quinny]

Graeme - I tend to think your Solar posts are over optimistic but, FFS the moon?

[KaiserJeep]

I have read James Nicoll's He-3 opinions for years. Note that he is a minority opinion on this topic, just as the minority opinion at the IPCC holds that mankind does not change planetary climate.

Much of the existing He-3 we have to experiment with actually came from a few hundred pounds of rock and lunar dust returned by the Apollo missions. The only place this substance is detected is within the top 30 thousandths of an inch of surface material.

What Nicoll and other detractors assumed is that the same gas perfusion that takes place on the surface of the Earth takes place on the Moon. It's simply not true, gas perfusion does not occur at all without atmospheric pressure, which is virtually zero on the moon. The 30 thousandths penetration is caused solely by the velocity at which the solar wind impacts the Lunar surface.

The majority of scientists hold that the processing of vast quantities of Lunar material is not required. You need brushes to collect a thin film of surface dust and grinders to remove the surface of the rocks. Once you have the material collected, the majority opinion holds that concentration of He-3 would be about 10,000X greater than the "perfusion" fanboys believe it is.

The whole debate over He-3 first occurred after the Apollo Lunar samples were 20+ years old, and the data about where the He-3 was located versus the surface is subject to interpretation in several ways.

It is amusing to note that some of the people who insist that the minority IPCC opinion on Climate Change must be ignored, are now insisting that the minority opinion about He-3/Deuterium fusion must be true. Anybody have an anti-space-travel agenda, here?

He-3/Deuterium fusion works quite well in microscopic quantities inside laser fusion chambers, much of the research occurred at Lawrence Livermore Labs here in California. But like I said before, there is a big difference between a tiny fusion fuel pellet and even a pilot version of a commercial power plant.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem. We can't design a larger scale fusion process until we have He-3 to experiment with. The He-3 is plentiful on the Lunar surface and extremely hard to come by on Earth.

Many of you obviously don't even want to attempt the R&D. Not a very "Scientific" attitude.

Now here is the dig for the anti-space crowd (and the Marxists): IMHO we should leave no stone un-turned in our search for that magical new energy source. That will buy us the time to spread throughout space in the next generation of Capitalist Splendor.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm an Engineer. We work in applied science. Note that I didn't even capitalize the word, because I don't worship science as do many here. In fact, it's fairly easy to establish that most of the scientists are wrong most of the time.

Nor do I worship an economic system or a deservedly obscure 19th century economist. In fact I don't worship anything I'm aware of, including the global ecology.

I am a supporter of the human race. That makes me unlike many here who frankly have the viewpoint that humanity is a disease suffered by the planet.

[kublikhan]

KaiserJeep - I have not found James Nicoll's opinion to be in the minority as you claim. Indeed, many of the points he brings up are also brought up by the Fusion Technology Institute, ITER association, etc. Perhaps when you say minority you are not referring to scientific voices, but instead the gathering of people posting on a "Lets mine the moon!" forum?

You say D-3He fusion is easier than D+T fusion. This does not appear to be true. Everything I read suggests this fusion cycle should be thought of, at best, a second generation fusion technology. IE, they are saying after we finally get commercial D+T fusion power up and running, than we can start tackling the more thorny problems of D-3He fusion. Or to put it more simply, let's learn to walk before we try to run.

This poster explains why D-3He fusion fuel is not more popular than D-T fuel(physics). D-3He needs a factor ~80 above D-T fusion power densities. D-3He burns less easily than D-T fuel, so if faces larger physics obstacles, making it a second generation fuel in many people's minds.

D-3He Fusion - Fusion Technology Institute

A careful study of the conditions required to burn D-3He and D-D fuels in a fusion reactor, with realistic models for bremsstrahling and synchrotron radiation losses, shows that the low reactivity of D-3He and D-D fusion reactions severely restricts the choice of fuel mixtures that can be brought to ignition and requires very low levels of impurities and alpha particle ash, with plasma temperature, density, beta and energy confinement time that are far beyond the capability of any known magnetic confinement system. The fuel mixtures of D-3He and D-D that can be brought to ignition produce large fluxes of neutrons and there are serious problems with fuel cycles and reserves.

FUEL REQUIREMENTS AND RESOURCES
A network of D-3He fusion power stations with the capacity to generate 108 TJ(e) per year (thus 10% of 2100 world energy) would consume about 500 tonnes of 3He per year. There is no significant terrestrial reserve of 3He –– the only prospects are lunar mining or manufacture via the D-D reaction. The Moon’s surface has accumulated 3He by exposure to the solar wind but the concentration of 3He in the lunar surface is so low that a tonne of lunar rock contains less energy than a tonne of coal. Fusion based on lunar 3He would require the mining of 6x1010 tonnes (60,000 million tonnes) of lunar rock each year to supply 108 TJ per year — roughly 20 times present-day worldwide coal production –– and an order of magnitude more would be required for fusion to supply all the world’s energy in 2100. Such an enterprise would be enormously expensive and, with the difficulty of burning the fuel, it is difficult to see that this route would be competitive ecomonically.

CONCLUSIONS
Burning mixtures of D and 3He fuels in a fusion reactor would be extremely difficult requiring much higher plasma temperature, density, beta and energy confinement time than a comparable D-T reactor. This fuel mixture is sensitive to impurities and helium ash, with an upper limit on impurities typically half of that assumed for ITER with D-T.

One of the main attractions held out for D-3He has been the prospect of no neutrons, but the so-called D-lean fuel mixtures that have been advocated to reduce the number of neutrons cannot reach ignition due to the effects of fuel dilution and bremmsstrahlung loss. The optimum fuel mixture (30% 3He: 70% D) would produce substantial numbers of 14 and 2.4 MeV neutrons. The 14 MeV neutrons can be avoided only by T extraction cycles but this brings the extra complexity and risks of storing large quantities of T storage until it decays into 3He. The fully catalised D-D reaction offers no appreciable reduction in neutrons compared to D-T.

Even if all the problems with D-3He can be overcome, the barrier would be the lack of a credible and sustainable source of 3He fuel. Perhaps one day far into the future these fuels will be brought to yield their potential, but the difficulties are so great and the benefits seem to be so marginal that, at the present time, these D-3He and D-D fuels cannot be thought of as alternatives to D-T.

ITER AND FUSION REACTOR ASPECTS THE FEASIBILITY OF USING D-3HE AND D-D FUSION FUELS

When you have limited resources, both technological and financial, it makes sense to divert these resources into areas that have the most promising cost/benefit ratio. The costs associated with commercial D-3He fusion are literally astronomical. The benefits over D+T fusion are marginal, at best. Therefore it does not make sense to put eggs in this basket at this time. Perhaps many decades from now the picture for D-3He fusion would be more favorable. But at this time, our R&D efforts would be better spent getting D+T fusion working, improving fission, improving fossil fuel efficiency, reducing the cost of renewables, etc.

[Graeme]

It's really refreshing to see posters come up with solutions especially you. Thanks. I believe that Kublikhan (and thanks efarmer!) is saying that mining and fusion is technically feasible but not now because of costs involved. In the meantime, we can plan for it and wait for the appropriate time. Isn't this site about exploring hydrocarbon depletion? That's what this thread is doing.

[sparky]

.
The whole concept is an absurdity , Mining require a lot of energy ,
the cost of taking the equipment to the moon would be literally astronomical
maintenance would require human presence with a life base , support systems and rotation of personnel
extracting the ore from the dross would require a processing plant with crushers and separators
sending the stuff back would require a shuttle service of rockets ,
this would require a fleet of rockets to bring the fuel there

are you guy serious ????

[KaiserJeep]

Perfectly serious. We acquired the necessary technology to do all that we need in the 1960's. There was a technology demonstration in 1969 involving Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Maybe you remember it?

It has been 45 years. We are now developing the civilian, commercial, practical versions of space tech. Just because it lost novelty and the news quit covering the topic, does not mean that the technology shriveled on the vine.

After all, within 45 years of the Wright Brothers first flight, jet fighters were in the skies over Europe, the battleships which had dominated the World for 200 years were obsoleted by the airplane and the aircraft carrier, and air mail existed. Then following that, FedEx ships overnight the world over, and the skies are full of space telescopes, communications satellites, and unmanned space missions to comets.

Technology never stops. Even during the Dark Ages, patient monks were making astronomical observations, creating advanced mathematics, and determining how characteristics were inherited from one generation of plants and animals to the next.

Indeed, technology is advancing faster today than it ever has. Decades ago it became impossible for one mind to contain all human knowledge, so were created an overmind called the Internet (some call it SkyNet).

Meanwhile the by-products of that Cold War space race are all around you. Microelectronic circuits replaced large steel chassis full of vacuum tubes. Fiber optics took over communications networks just as we started to run out of cheap copper. Microprocessors (created to run unmanned space probes) put more computing power on your desktop - or in your pocket - than existed on Earth in the 1950's.

Just because you quit watching, does not mean that things quit changing.

[StarvingLion]

Perfectly serious. We acquired the necessary technology to do all that we need in the 1960's. There was a technology demonstration in 1969 involving Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Maybe you remember it?

It has been 45 years. We are now developing the civilian, commercial, practical versions of space tech. Just because it lost novelty and the news quit covering the topic, does not mean that the technology shriveled on the vine.

After all, within 45 years of the Wright Brothers first flight, jet fighters were in the skies over Europe, the battleships which had dominated the World for 200 years were obsoleted by the airplane and the aircraft carrier, and air mail existed. Then following that, FedEx ships overnight the world over, and the skies are full of space telescopes, communications satellites, and unmanned space missions to comets.

Technology never stops. Even during the Dark Ages, patient monks were making astronomical observations, creating advanced mathematics, and determining how characteristics were inherited from one generation of plants and animals to the next.

Indeed, technology is advancing faster today than it ever has. Decades ago it became impossible for one mind to contain all human knowledge, so were created an overmind called the Internet (some call it SkyNet).

Meanwhile the by-products of that Cold War space race are all around you. Microelectronic circuits replaced large steel chassis full of vacuum tubes. Fiber optics took over communications networks just as we started to run out of cheap copper. Microprocessors (created to run unmanned space probes) put more computing power on your desktop - or in your pocket - than existed on Earth in the 1950's.

Just because you quit watching, does not mean that things quit changing.

Its all bullshit, man. You can take your Apollo 11 photo album and your bag full of semiconductors and your solutions of the Serge Lang 'Algebra' textbook to your local loan officer at the commerce bank and promptly

Get laughed out of the building

You're broke, man. Bravado from the dead and buried space age won't get you a cup of coffee. And neither will a Ray Kurzweil Singularity Acid Trip.

You haven't proven a damn thing about how all that junk has provided a secure claim on production for YOURSELF. All you have convinced me is that you are a cheerleader, and nothing else.

[KaiserJeep]

Touched a nerve there, did I?

Such bitterness from one so young.

Remember, you are expressing yourself over the very media and network that space tech enabled, and using the very technology that proves my points.

Reality, what a concept.