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"I was wholly addicted to watching Kojack, for as long as it was on television."
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Who knew that the moon - Earth's moon - contains deposits of that rare - yet indispensable material, radiactum? And what if someone (perhaps someone on Mars) was already on the moon, stealing this precious ore?
Moon mining has been a popular topic in the last few years. After President Bush announced plans to return to the Moon, arguments for doing so have come thick and fast from moon enthusiasts.
One of the best reasons for going back was found in (among others) sample 75501, collected by astronaut Harrison Schmitt on December 13, 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. It turns out that University of Wisconsin engineers found - not gold - but helium-3.
It turns out that hydrogen fusion takes place at very high temperatures, requiring a magnetic containment field. Hoever, maintaining a deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction for long periods exceeded the limits of the magnetic containment technology. Substituting helium-3 for tritium allows the use of electrostatic confinement and reduces the complexity of fusion reactors. As a bonus - no high-level radioactive waste is produced, either. Helium-3 will likely mean practical hydrogen fusion.
One fly in the ointment is that mining enough helium-3 to power a city like Detroit for a year, about 220 pounds, would require digging up a 3/4 square mile piece of moonscape to a depth of nine feet. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
SpaceX Intros Extravehicular Activity Suit
'Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere.'
Athena Smart Security Guard Robot With Face Recognition
'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
The FLUTE Project - A Huge Liquid Mirror In Space
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
Robot Preachers Found To Undermine Religious Commitment
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
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