View Full Version : Luna ed Elio-3
Son già un paio di volte che leggo 'sta cosa in giro, secondo cui si vogliono sfruttare gli ingenti depositi di elio-3 presente sulla luna. Ora ho letto che addirittura la Russia pensa di costruire una base permanente entro il 2020 per lo sfruttamento di quest'isotopo.
Domanda: ma come cazz fa l'elio a restare sulla luna?! :mbe:
Coyote74
25-01-2006, 18:22
Son già un paio di volte che leggo 'sta cosa in giro, secondo cui si vogliono sfruttare gli ingenti depositi di elio-3 presente sulla luna. Ora ho letto che addirittura la Russia pensa di costruire una base permanente entro il 2020 per lo sfruttamento di quest'isotopo.
Domanda: ma come cazz fa l'elio a restare sulla luna?! :mbe:
In bacini sotto la superficie? :)
L'elio-3 rimane intrappolato nello strato superificiale di regolite, depositato dal vento solare che "spazza" la superfice lunare da miliardi di anni ;)
L'elio-3 rimane intrappolato nello strato superificiale di regolite, depositato dal vento solare che "spazza" la superfice lunare da miliardi di anni ;)
Aaaahhh in quel senso lì... adesso sta in piedi la cosa...
Ma intrappolato come? Chimicamente? E come lo tirerebbero fuori?
duchetto
25-01-2006, 20:25
anche la Cina è interessata a costruire una base permanente sulla luna per sfruttare l'elio-3 l'anno prossimo dovrebbero inviare un satellite orbitante per studiare e selezionare le aree adatte a tale scopo.
Ma intrappolato come? Chimicamente? E come lo tirerebbero fuori?
Il vento solare è composto da ioni di atomi leggeri (principalmente idrogeno ed elio) che vengono emessi dal Sole a una velocità di diverse centinaia chilometri al secondo. A questa velocità gli ioni del vento solare, riescono a penetrare per qualche decimo di millimetro all'interno delle rocce lunari.
Per quanto riguarda l'estrazione ho letto di metodi che usano l'energia termica del sole per separare gli elementi volatili dalla regolite ;)
speriamo che lo facciano sul serio
Il vento solare è composto da ioni di atomi leggeri (principalmente idrogeno ed elio) che vengono emessi dal Sole a una velocità di diverse centinaia chilometri al secondo. A questa velocità gli ioni del vento solare, riescono a penetrare per qualche decimo di millimetro all'interno delle rocce lunari.
Per quanto riguarda l'estrazione ho letto di metodi che usano l'energia termica del sole per separare gli elementi volatili dalla regolite ;)
Capito, grazie ;)
Questa non la sapevo proprio...
Ma se non sbaglio l'elio-3 dovrebbe poi essere impiegato nelle centrali a fusione, giusto?
razziadacqua
26-01-2006, 00:47
Tutte belle cose ma continuo a chiedermi...
come lo riporterebbero sulla terra?
ed in quali quantità/peso?
vi ricordo che ancora nn abbiamo un veicolo in grado di fare viaggi orbitali,senza serbatoio esterno e senza perdere pezzi.Insomma nn abbiamo alcuna sorta di navetta spaziale ecco,tant'è vero che la prossima missione umana sulla luna avverrà con le stesse metodiche e mezzi delle missioni apollo.
Certo oh,se creassero veicoli di trasporto automatici allora nn ci sarebbero problemi con le schermature e cazzi vari,quindi potrebbero creare mezzi diversi...
E che il trasporto di un solo Kg di materiale costa diversi mln sullo Shuttle...
Mi pare che la NASA abbia un lento programma di ricerca sulla propulsione nucleare per le navette. Se ne parlo' gia' un anno fa, quando venne cancellata una missione, troppo costosa per il loro budget, che avrebbe dovuto portare nei prossimi anni una navetta spinta dal nucleare verso le lune ghiacciate di Giove.
Tutte belle cose ma continuo a chiedermi...
come lo riporterebbero sulla terra?
ed in quali quantità/peso?
vi ricordo che ancora nn abbiamo un veicolo in grado di fare viaggi orbitali,senza serbatoio esterno e senza perdere pezzi.Insomma nn abbiamo alcuna sorta di navetta spaziale ecco,tant'è vero che la prossima missione umana sulla luna avverrà con le stesse metodiche e mezzi delle missioni apollo.
Certo oh,se creassero veicoli di trasporto automatici allora nn ci sarebbero problemi con le schermature e cazzi vari,quindi potrebbero creare mezzi diversi...
E che il trasporto di un solo Kg di materiale costa diversi mln sullo Shuttle...
E tieni conto che nelle rocce riportate dalle missioni Apollo la concentrazione di elio era compresa tra i 100 e i 20 ppm :eek: . Quanti milioni di tonnellate di materiale bisognerà "vagliare" per avere qualche metro cubo di elio?
Mi pare che la NASA abbia un lento programma di ricerca sulla propulsione nucleare per le navette. Se ne parlo' gia' un anno fa, quando venne cancellata una missione, troppo costosa per il loro budget, che avrebbe dovuto portare nei prossimi anni una navetta spinta dal nucleare verso le lune ghiacciate di Giove.
I Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, doveva essere la prima concretizzazione del progetto Prometheus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter
razziadacqua
26-01-2006, 23:42
E tieni conto che nelle rocce riportate dalle missioni Apollo la concentrazione di elio era compresa tra i 100 e i 20 ppm :eek: . Quanti milioni di tonnellate di materiale bisognerà "vagliare" per avere qualche metro cubo di elio?
No ma io penso,sapevo che la lavorazione delle rocce avverrebbe in situ,in modo automatizzato,in modalità continua...in grosse quantità nn ci sarebbero problemi penso ad estrarlo..ma penso solo che ci vorranno tipo 30missioni spaziali per portare sulla luna le componenti per costruire un sistema di estrazione base.
Tanto a voglia a discorrere ma il ferro è ferro e l acciaio pes :°D dubito che i macchinari di estrazione verranno fatti con la plastica :)
Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium-3 as the perfect fuel source.
By Julie Wakefield
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 05:30 pm ET
30 June 2000
Researchers and space enthusiasts seehelium 3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, nonpolluting, withvirtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim its the fuel ofthe 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any of it is found on Earth.But there is plenty of it on the moon.
Society is straining to keep pace withenergy demands, expected to increase eightfold by 2050 as the world populationswells toward 12 billion. The moonjust may be the answer.
"Helium 3 fusion energy may be thekey to future space exploration and settlement," said Gerald Kulcinski,Director of the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) at the University ofWisconsin at Madison.
Scientists estimate there are about1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousandsof years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tonscould supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, accordingto Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt.
Cash crop of the moon
When the solar wind, the rapid streamof charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 isdeposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteoritebombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters ofthe lunar surface.
"Helium 3 could be the cash crop forthe moon," said Kulcinski, a longtime advocate and leading pioneer in thefield, who envisions the moon becoming "the Hudson Bay Store of Earth."Today helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion a ton in terms ofits energy equivalent in oil, he estimates. "When the moon becomes an independentcountry, it will have something to trade."
Fusion research began in 1951 in theUnited States under military auspices. After its declassification in 1957scientists began looking for a candidate fuel source that wouldn't produceneutrons. Although Louie Alvarez and Robert Cornog discovered helium 3in 1939, only a few hundred pounds (kilograms) were known to exist on Earth,most the by-product of nuclear-weapon production.
Apollo astronauts found helium 3 onthe moon in 1969, but the link between the isotope and lunar resourceswas not made until 1986. "It took 15 years for us [lunar geologists andfusion pioneers] to stumble across each other," said Schmitt, the lastastronaut to leave footprints on the moon.
For solving long-term energy needs,proponents contend helium 3 is a better choice than first generation nuclearfuels like deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen), which are nowbeing tested on a large scale worldwide in tokamak thermonuclear reactors.Such approaches, which generally use strong magnetic fields to containthe tremendously hot, electrically charged gas or plasma in which fusionoccurs, have cost billions and yielded little. The International ThermonuclearExperimental Reactor or ITER tokamak, for example, won't produce a singlewatt of electricity for several years yet.
Increases production and safety costs
"I don't doubt it will eventually work,"Kulcinski said. "But I have serious doubts it will ever provide an economicpower source on Earth or in space." That's because reactors that exploitthe fusion of deuterium and tritium release 80 percent of their energyin the form of radioactive neutrons, which exponentially increase productionand safety costs.
In contrast, helium 3 fusion wouldproduce little residual radioactivity. Helium 3, an isotope of the familiarhelium used to inflate balloons and blimps, has a nucleus with two protonsand one neutron. A nuclear reactor based on the fusion of helium 3 anddeuterium, which has a single nuclear proton and neutron, would producevery few neutrons -- about 1 percent of the number generated by the deuterium-tritiumreaction. "You could safely build a helium 3 plant in the middle of a bigcity," Kulcinski said.
Helium 3 fusion is also ideal for poweringspacecraft and interstellar travel. While offering the high performancepower of fusion -- "a classic Buck Rogers propulsion system" -- helium3 rockets would require less radioactive shielding, lightening the load,said Robert Frisbee, an advanced propulsion engineer at NASA's Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena California.
Recently Kulcinski's team reports progresstoward making helium 3 fusion possible. Inside a lab chamber, the Wisconsinresearchers have produced protons from a steady-state deuterium-helium3 plasma at a rate of 2.6 million reactions per second. That's fast enoughto produce fusion power but not churn out electricity. "It's proof of principle,but a long way from producing electricity or making a power source outof it," Kulcinski said. He will present the results in Amsterdam in midJuly at the Fourth International Conference on Exploration and Utilizationof the Moon.
Size of a basketball
The chamber, which is roughly the sizeof a basketball, relies on the electrostatic focusing of ions into a densecore by using a spherical grid, explained Wisconsin colleague John Santarius,a study co-author. With some refinement, such Inertial Electrostatic Confinement(IEC) fusion systems could produce high-energy neutrons and protons usefulin industry and medicine. For example, the technology could generate short-livedPET (positron emission tomography) isotopes on site at hospitals, enablingsafe brain scans of young children and even pregnant women. Portable IECdevices could bridge the gap between today's science-based research andthe ultimate goal of generating electricity, Santarius said.
This fall, the University of Wisconsinteam hopes to demonstrate a third-generation fusion reaction between helium3 and helium 3 particles in the lab. The reaction would be completely voidof radiation.
"Although helium 3 would be very exciting,"says Bryan Palaszewski, leader of advanced fuels at NASA Glenn ResearchCenter at Lewis Field, "first we have to go back to the moon and be capableof doing significant operations there."
Economically unfeasible
Indeed for now, the economics of extractingand transporting helium 3 from the moon are also problematic. Even if scientistssolved the physics of helium 3 fusion, "it would be economically unfeasible,"asserted Jim Benson, chairman of SpaceDev in Poway, California, which strivesto be one of the first commercial space-exploration companies. "UnlessI'm mistaken, you'd have to strip-mine large surfaces of the moon."
While it's true that to produce roughly70 tons of helium 3, for example, a million tons of lunar soil would needto be heated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius) to liberatethe gas, proponents say lunar strip mining is not the goal. "There's enoughin the Mare Tranquillitatis alone to last for several hundred years," Schmittsaid. The moon would be a stepping stone to other helium 3-rich sources,such as the atmospheres of Saturn and Uranus.
Benson agreed that finding fuel sourcesin space is the way to go. But for him, H2O and not helium 3 is the idealfuel source. His personal goal is to create gas stations in space by miningasteroids for water. The water can be electrolyzed into hydrogen or oxygenfuel or used straight as a propellant by superheating with solar arrays."Water is more practical and believable in the short run," he said.
But proponents believe only helium3 can pay its own way.
"Water just isn't that valuable," Schmittsaid. Besides the helium, a mining process would produce water and oxygenas by-products, he says.
Russian Rocket Builder Aims for Moon Base by 2015, Reports Say
Associated Press
posted: 26 January 2006
12:18 p.m. ET
MOSCOW (AP) – The head of a leading Russian space company said it was considering plans to set up a permanent moon base by 2015, a statement that appeared to be an effort to win government funds rather than a specific action plan, news reports said Thursday.
Nikolai Sevastyanov, the head of the state-controlled RKK Energiya company that built Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, said that mining helium-3, a potential rich source of energy, and harnessing it back to Earth would be a key priority in the moon exploration program, the Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru Web sites reported.
Sevastyanov said a Russian moon base could start tapping helium-3 in 2020. He and other Russian space officials have made similar projections in the past, but the government hasn't allocated any funds yet for moon exploration.
Sevastyanov's statement, made at a seminar on space research, appeared to be part of Energiya's publicity campaign aimed at attracting government funding for the development of a next-generation spacecraft.
Sevastyanov said the Klipper spacecraft being designed by Energiya could serve as a transport ship to deliver helium. The company has also proposed building the Parom (Ferry) space vehicle that could help assemble elements of moon missions on Earth's orbit.
In January 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush outlined a plan for NASA to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and then on to Mars and beyond.
Scientists believe the moon's rich resources of helium-3 could be used in futuristic fusion reactors on Earth that would generate electricity without producing nuclear waste. Such fusion technology could also power rockets for deep space travel in the future.
There is so little helium-3 on Earth that the technology hasn't been studied much. The moon appears to have it in abundance because it lacks the atmosphere and magnetic field that keep helium-3 from raining down on our planet from outer space.
Speaking at the same seminar in Moscow, Erik Galimov, the head of the Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry Institute, also said Thursday that helium-3 could emerge as a vital source of energy as Earth's resources were being quickly exhausted, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
razziadacqua
01-02-2006, 00:14
OH no!!è arrivato Gyxx con i suoi articoli in inglese kilometrici oh no!!!!
;)
OH no!!è arrivato Gyxx con i suoi articoli in inglese kilometrici oh no!!!!
;)
chi?
sono due brevi articoli, dove li vedi i papiri?
duchetto
01-02-2006, 00:35
oh che bello ci alleiamo con la cina per mandare sonde sulla luna :D
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=57629&r=PI
vBulletin® v3.6.4, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.