Project Icarus could harvest gas from Uranus
Wired.co.uk / Duncan Geere
07-Jun-2011 (one comment)


An audacious scheme to harvest gas from the planet Uranus could be our best hope for fuelling interstellar space travel,according to the team behind Project Icarus.

Helium-3 is an enormously useful gas for fusion reactions. It's not radioactive, and its sole high-energy by-product is a proton, which can be contained in electric and magnetic fields, resulting in direct net electricity generation. That means clean, efficient fusion power.

The problem is that there isn't much helium-3 left on Earth. What there is sits deep in the mantle, trapped during the formation of the planet. There's thought to be more on the Moon, thanks to the solar wind impacting on its surface over billions of years, but the gas giants of the outer solar system are basically where the party's at if you're looking to pick up helium-3.

Project Icarus is the reincarnation of Project Daedalus from the 70s, which aimed to design a plausible interstellar unmanned spacecraft which would reach its destination within a human lifetime, using current or near-future technology. Icarus will again challenge scientists and engine... >>>

Simorgh5555

Interstellar Space Travel almost reality

by Simorgh5555 on Tue Jun 07, 2011 12:39 PM PDT

Helium-3 can also be found on the moon and there are actually ideas to mine our one and only satellite for this precious commodity. 

 Helium-3 (He3) is gas that has the potential to be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. There is very little helium-3 available on the Earth. However, there are thought to be significant supplies on the Moon. Several governments have subsequently signalled their intention to go to the Moon to mine helium-3 as a fuel supply. Such plans may come to fruition within the next two to three decades and trigger a new Space Race.

 As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 -- or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth -- could power the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne -- making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities.

 //www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

Forget about nuclear, solar or wind energy. Helium 3 is light years more advanced with small quantities capable of powering whole football fields. Let us hope the surface of the moon is not destroyed in the process.  



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