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Science Fiction
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"Science fiction and science have always danced around each other. Science fiction is the subconscious of science."
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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
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
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'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
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'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
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