OT of an OT: Ethanol

[Hunpecked]

Here's a report of a pre-processing step that supposedly makes production of ethanol from corn more economical:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nps032006.php

[Renegade 13]

Glyn said:
from what I have read the Helium 3 is in theroy easier to fuse and with a lot less radioactive waste.

Hmm... I'm no nuclear physicist so I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that the heavier the element, the greater the temperature/pressure necessary to evoke fusion.

[Suicide Junkie]

He3 + He3 --> 2x H1 + He4 + 12.85 Mev
He3 + H2 --> H1 + He4 + 18.4 Mev

H+H->D and D+H->He3 reactions produce only 1-5Mev.
But, then, you are starting with less in these cases.

[Will]

Helium-3 is a pipe dream. There is no practical source to get any quantity of it, so its usefulness as a fuel and energy source is basically nil. That article talked about the moon as a source for thousands of years worth of energy... except it would require a moon base far larger than any current plans could achieve in even a hundred years. The moon base would then have to collect tons of dust from the surface of the moon, and heat it to extremely high temperatures, and then seperate the Helium-3 isotopes from anything else that comes out. Then it would have to be shipped back to Earth. Overall, to see it become an energy source, we would need a space elevator to reduce the costs of shipping supplies up to the moon, and retrieving Helium-3 from the moon, and a substantial base on the moon, amounting to a factory... one that will also need a very powerful and precice radar station, and the capability to deflect any incoming meteorites or the ability to absorb the impact... unless you built the majority of the base underneath the surface, which would take even longer and cost even more. To address energy concerns now, it's simply not an option.

Oh, and Renegade... Helium-3 fusion is usually understood to be with deuterium, and Hydrogen fusion is usually either four protons fusing or deuterium/tritium fusing. The difference in mass between Helium-3/deuterium and deuterium/tritium is negligable, and technically the Helium-3 would mass slightly less because it has an extra proton rather than a neutron. But the mass isn't the issue, it's the charge. To get two nuclei to fuse, they have to overcome the EM energy forcing them apart, until the strong nuclear interaction takes hold, and the new nucleus is formed (with a lot of energy). The helium fusion would take a little more energy to cause the collisions compared to the deuterium/tritium fusion, and both would take a lot less than four protons. As a kind of analogy, try forcing two north poles of magnets together; that's deuterium/tritium. Now, try the same with one magnet being about twice the strength; that's Helium-3/deuterium. And finally, take four magnets, and try to force them all together; that's four protons.

[Suicide Junkie]

Trying to use helium3 from the moon to power all of earth is just plain silly.
In the exact same way that sending a copy of everything in the library of congress down your superfast internet connection is silly.

Having a mobile moon reactor, which does the fusion, scoops up dirt and uses the waste heat from the reactor to bake out the He3 sounds much more efficient. And collects oxygen for the moonies at the same time.
It could even be a tunneling drill-thing to gain protection from natural bombardment.

Of course, the energy density *is* high enough that shipping it to earth could be very lucrative; billions of dollars per ton, supposedly.

[Atrocities]

I read that helium is rapidly being depeleted. Once it is gone, its gone.

[Suicide Junkie]

Helium is quite rare on earth, since it is so light and leaks off into space, but overall it makes up over a quarter of the universe.

[Jack Simth]

There's also the little issue of an amount of helium from little things like the Solar Wind getting caught in Earth's gravity well, and that much of it (unlike the lighter hydrogen, which exists almost exclusivly in bound forms) is actually trapped by Earth's gravity well.....

[Atrocities]

I want to form my own corporation.. The Space Gas Mining Guild. I will then lay claims to all the known and unknown gas and mineral resources of the galaxy. In order to mine anything out side of Earth, a company would have to buy the rights to do so from me.

Kinda like the guy who claims he owns the moon and is selling off acres of it to really stupid people who have nothing better to do with their money then give it to a talented scam artist.

On the Moon, what do you think will be the fuel sorce for vehicles in side of a doom colony? Gasoline?