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Old 03-01-2013, 08:26 PM   #1
Malenfant
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Where's the Helium?

Time for a new discussion...

Inspired by this: http://sci-ence.org/helium/
and this: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithab...out-of-helium/

In the OTU, helium should be all over the place. It's the waste product from fusion reactors (pretty much every TL 9+ society will have lots of those, as would every spaceship), it's easily extracted from gas giant atmosphere mining and it's a waste product from fuel skimming, and there's easy access to moons that may trap it in their regolith too (though getting it from gas giants would be easier)... but canon is silent about what happens to it all.

Is it usually just discarded without a care to float off into space? is it stockpiled? Is there a boom in zeppelins (not terribly likely, given antigrav. But it could be cheaper)? Does it all go to hightech industry where its exotic properties can be used? is it sold off to lower tech worlds who are using up their existing helium supply?

So, what's happening to all the helium? Any ideas? (canon or non-canon will be fine)
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Old 03-01-2013, 08:50 PM   #2
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

The gas giant/regolith mining references would be for Helium-3, which would be a kind of fusion fuel, not particular useful as a gas, nor needed in large volumes.

One D+H3 reaction is about 18 MeV. 6.24x10^12 MeV per Joule. One gram of fuel is 6x10^23 amu; 5 amu per reaction, or 1.2x10^23 x18 / 6.24x10^12 ~= 3.5 x 10^11 J per gram. A watt is a J/second. So you've got 100 gigawatts per gram of fuel per second.

The reaction produces a regular helium atom and a proton, or about as much hydrogen + helium as you started with. H4 may be a "waste product", but there's only as much of it as you started with.

Density of liquid helium (at one atmosphere) is 125 grams per liter. A few liters of the stuff is quite a lot of energy.

The waste product from fuel skimming you could just dump back into the gas giant atmosphere.

There doesn't seem to be a need for vast quantities of the stuff, either for its own sake or as a byproduct.
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Old 03-01-2013, 09:22 PM   #3
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

In the real world helium is needed to keep superconductors cold enough to work. I'm not super well versed on canon. Does Traveller have "warm" superconductors?

Helium is still useful for deep sea diving where nitrogen narcosis gets risky.
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Old 03-01-2013, 09:41 PM   #4
Malenfant
 
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

Well at the very least there'd be a lot of helium sucked up in fuel scoops and GG mining. It clearly has uses on some of the worlds in Charted Space (even if it is on worlds with similar TL to our own) - it seems silly to just vent or dump it all.

Even if TL 9+ has little use for it, the many lowtech worlds in Charted Space would probably love to get hold of all that helium, for anything from making zeppelins and dirigibles for transport at the TL 4/5 end of the TL scale (imagine that!) to superconductors and tracer gas at the TL 7/8 end.

http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/ene...ium_facts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications
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Old 03-02-2013, 03:04 AM   #5
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

Quote:
Originally Posted by combatmedic View Post
Yeah, I think you are right.
Helium airships would be a cheap alternative to contragrav for worlds in the low to middle TL range.
Given that the helium has to be brought in in spaceships anyway, and given that it takes an enormous envelope of expensive helium-proof membrane and a framework of aerospace alloy to provide the lift of a modest-sized and convenient contragrav unit, I expect that it would be a very expensive alternative to contragrav.

Low-tech worlds must be desperately poor, but you find imported trucks in even the poorest parts of the world today, and horses are an expensive alternative to motorbikes.


As for helium being a waste product of fusion power generators, isn't that true of only tiny, tiny quantities?
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Old 03-02-2013, 04:35 AM   #6
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brett View Post
Given that the helium has to be brought in in spaceships anyway, and given that it takes an enormous envelope of expensive helium-proof membrane and a framework of aerospace alloy to provide the lift of a modest-sized and convenient contragrav unit, I expect that it would be a very expensive alternative to contragrav.

Low-tech worlds must be desperately poor, but you find imported trucks in even the poorest parts of the world today, and horses are an expensive alternative to motorbikes.


As for helium being a waste product of fusion power generators, isn't that true of only tiny, tiny quantities?
True, it may be better to just pay more up front and get second hand contragrav lifters.


Maybe ships visiting low TL worlds fill balloons with the stuff and hands those out to the primitive local kids...
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Old 03-02-2013, 05:31 AM   #7
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brett View Post
As for helium being a waste product of fusion power generators, isn't that true of only tiny, tiny quantities?
World-wide electricity generation on Earth today is about 73 EJ per year, and hydrogen fusion produces about 1 TJ per gram, so if we used fusion power that would produce ~73 tonnes of helium per year. The USA consumes about 15,000 tonnes of helium per year.

Cheap energy from fusion will increase energy consumption per head. Planets in Traveller are generally a lot less populous than Earth today. Swings, roundabouts…. It doesn't look to me as though helium waste will be a significant source.
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Old 03-02-2013, 12:01 AM   #8
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

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Originally Posted by Malenfant View Post
So, what's happening to all the helium? Any ideas? (canon or non-canon will be fine)
About the same thing that's happening to the water, iron, oxygen or alumina. It's an ubiquitous resource anybody can gather in-system in any amount they want. It simply doesn't make sense as an article of interstellar commerce.
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Old 03-02-2013, 12:16 AM   #9
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
About the same thing that's happening to the water, iron, oxygen or alumina. It's an ubiquitous resource anybody can gather in-system in any amount they want. It simply doesn't make sense as an article of interstellar commerce.
Except that's not the case for everyone. Industrialised (or preindustrial) societies that aren't space-capable certainly can't get them on their own.

Maybe this is part of the problem of how the lower tech societies are supposed to fit in with the Imperium. If a world does not have the technology to travel into space, does it still have access to resources that are out there? Do traders ship it in to them? Does it have any claim to those resources in its system, or are they just plundered by everyone else because they have no means to stop them?
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Old 03-02-2013, 12:40 AM   #10
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Default Re: Where's the Helium?

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Originally Posted by Malenfant View Post
Maybe this is part of the problem of how the lower tech societies are supposed to fit in with the Imperium.
Helium is the least of the problems with low tech worlds. If you're being realistic, 'low tech world' means 'desperately poor', and they'll use whatever's cheapest, of any tech level.
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