Shoule NASA be nixed?

[tkdguy]

Harrison Schmitt, the last man to set foot on the moon says it should be.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

The importance of Helium 3 to clean fusion reactors alone should have been enough of a reason for us to return to the moon instead of shooting for Mars too soon.

 

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

Fusion reactions

Some fusion processes produce highly energetic neutrons which render reactor components radioactive with activation products through the continuous bombardment of the reactor's components with emitted neutrons. Because of this bombardment and irradiation, power generation must occur indirectly through thermal means, as in a fission reactor. However, the appeal of helium-3 fusion stems from the aneutronic nature of its reaction products. Helium-3 itself is non-radioactive. The lone high-energy by-product, the proton, can be contained using electric and magnetic fields. The momentum energy of this proton (created in the fusion process) will interact with the containing electromagnetic field, resulting in direct net electricity generation.[15]

and from: http://www.asi.org/adb/02/09/he3-intro.html

 

The supply

Some He3 is available on Earth. It is a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which would supply us with about 300 kg of He3 and could continue to produce about 15 kg per year. The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg, and another 187 kg is mixed up with the natural gas we have stored; these sources are not renewable at any significant rate.

In their 1988 paper, Kulcinski, et al. (see ref note below), estimate a total of 1,100,000 metric tonnes of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind in the lunar regolith. Since the regolith has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, we'll probably find He3 down to depths of several meters.

The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria.

To extract He3 from the lunar soil, we heat the dust to about 600 degrees C.

We get most of the other volatiles out at the same time, so we'll be heating up the rocks anyway. (To get the oxgyen out, we'll turn up the furnace to about 900 deg C and do some other nasty stuff; but that's a different story.)

 

The Energy

That 1 million metric tonnes of He3, reacted with deuterium, would generate about 20,000 terrawatt-years of thermal energy. The units alone are awesome: a terrawatt-year is one trillion (10 to 12th power) watt-years. To put this into perspective, one 100-watt light bulb will use 100 watt-years of energy in one year.

That's about 10 times the energy we could get from mining all the fossil fuels on Earth, without the smog and acid rain. If we torched all our uranium in liquid metal fast breeder reactors, we could generate about half this much energy, and have some interesting times storing the waste.

The Value

About 25 tonnes of He3 would power the United States for 1 year at our current rate of energy consumption. To put it in perspective: that's about the weight of a fully loaded railroad box car, or a maximum Space Shuttle payload.

To assign an economic value, suppose we assume He3 would replace the fuels the United States currently buys to generate electricity. We still have all those power generating plants and distribution network, so we can't use how much we pay for electricity. As a replacement for that fuel, that 25-tonne load of He3 would worth on the order of $75 billion today, or $3 billion per tonne.

The Payoff

A guess is the best we can do. Let's suppose that by the time we're slinging tanks of He3 off the moon, the world-wide demand is 100 tonnes of the stuff a year, and people are happy to pay $3 billion per tonne. That gives us gross revenues of $300 billion a year.

To put that number in perspective: Ignoring the cost of money and taxes and whatnot, that rate of income would launch a moon shot like our reference mission every day for the next 10,000 years. (At which point, we will have used up all the helium-3 on the moon and had better start thinking about something else.)

 

[Sundog]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

That's actually not a good reason for going to the moon, H-Man. He3 has great potential, but it's a potential we literally cannot take advantage of. We can, just barely, make energy out of Deutrium-Tritium Fusion. He3 Fusion is at least thirty years away; I don't think it will happen in my lifetime.

NASA actually does a good job when you consider the horrible restrictions it's under. It has NO guaranteed funding - it exists from budget to budget, every project it starts subject to congressional whim. Give NASA a guaranteed budget and I believe you'd see wonders.

[McCoy]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Nuclear fusion is the power of the future, and always will be. Many, many good reasons to go into space, want to see a demonstration-of-principle device before I add He3 to the list.

[Escafarc]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

If it's going to continue, I think NASA needs to be retooled and reorganised with strong leadership(which has been IMO missing over the last 20 years). It needs a clear well defined direction/goal.

[dmjalund]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

If it's going to continue' date=' I think NASA needs to be retooled and reorganised with strong leadership(which has been IMO missing over the last 20 years). It needs a clear well defined direction/goal.[/quote']You can't have real leadership without giving it self power.

[Escafarc]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

You can't have real leadership without giving it self power.

 

I agree. Maybe we need to start over with a new organization. NASA might be too much a product of the cold war in the way it's set up.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Even beyond that, the space program itself based solely on the importance of satelites and the scientific importance of Earth studies from orbit should be reason enough to keep NASA active.

[Cancer]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

You can't have real leadership without giving it self power.

 

Therein lies the problem. NASA doesn't even have the authority to redirect its internal resources from a project that is clearly failing to another that isn't. Its hands are tied by Congress, who use it as high-visibility long-term high-tech pork.

 

That said, there's no doubt it does science literally no one else is doing or can do (and full disclosure, yeah, about 15 years ago I did receive grant money from Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA under contract from NASA). And if you dissolve it without a clear vision for continuing the work it is doing, then all you do is destroy space science in the United States. I have not heard any coherent statements about how to continue doing to do space science by any of the people in the Disband NASA bandwagon; what little I have heard from them seems like the tantrums from childish types who can't get past "It's Not Doing What I Want" or "It's Not Doing It In My District" or "It's Not Doing Anything I Profit Directly From".

 

The ideal thing would be to free it from minute-by-minute congressional meddling, but that is about as likely to succeed as the secret project to developed genetically-modified winged pigs.

[Christopher]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

The title is wrong. He doesn't say: "No more space exploration"

He says: "Let's reboot the entire programm and focus more on deep space exploration". He also noticed the lack of Focus as the reason for it

 

About Helium-3:

On top of the perceptions and politics, Schmitt argues that deep-space exploration is necessary for controlling space resources ? in particular, a fusion fuel called helium-3 that comes from the sun and is preserved in lunar soils. "Under certain financial constraints, helium-3 can be economically viable as a fuel for fusion power reactors here on Earth, and to have that dominated by another power such as China I think would be very dangerous for us. That's just another aspect of the geopolitical significance of exploration," Schmitt said.

 

I think you did not properly read the article, since most of what you say is also part of the entire idea of rebooting NASA so you are actually arguing against someone with the same Ideas.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29helium.html

Agencies’ Lack of Coordination Hindered Supply of Crucial Gas, Report Says

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 28, 2011

 

WASHINGTON — The United States is running out of a rare gas that is crucial for detecting smuggled nuclear weapons materials because one arm of the Energy Department was selling the gas six times as fast as another arm could accumulate it, and the two sides failed to communicate for years, according to a new Congressional audit.

 

The gas, helium-3, is a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program, but as the number of nuclear weapons has declined, so has the supply of the gas. Yet, as the supply was shrinking, the government was investing more than $200 million to develop detection technology that required helium-3.

 

As a result, government scientists and contractors are now racing to find or develop a new detection technology.

 

According to the Government Accountability Office report, the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which gathers the gas from old nuclear weapons, never told the department’s Isotope Program about the slowing rate of helium-3 production. That is in part because it was secret information that could be used to calculate the size of weapon stockpiles.

 

For its part, the Isotope Program calculated demand for the gas not in a scientific way but instead on the basis of how many commercial companies called to inquire each year about helium-3 supplies.

 

Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland characterized the situation as “gross mismanagement.” As the ranking Democrat on the House science committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Ms. Edwards was one of the members of Congress who asked the accountability office to study the problem after it was detected in 2008.

 

“With so much riding on helium-3, it is shocking to learn that the department’s forecast for demand is based simply on a telephone log tracking those who called asking about the availability of helium-3,” she said.

 

The report is to be released in the coming week by Ms. Edwards and Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the science committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

 

Energy Department officials said that since the discrepancy was discovered, they had moved the Isotope Program under the umbrella of the agency’s science division and had worked harder to forecast supply and demand for various materials. But they did acknowledge the bureaucratic fumble; the Isotope Program is responsible for the supply of materials it produces, but not for the supply of those it distributes but are produced by other parts of the Energy Department.

 

The helium-3 is considered a “legacy material,” something that exists only because of past activities. Ms. Edwards pointed out that helium-3 was also used in the oil and gas industry and in research.

 

Because of divided responsibilities and a sudden new source of demand, “all of a sudden we realized we had this additional factor and had to come up with something different,” Steven Aoki, the deputy under secretary of energy for counterterrorism, said in a telephone interview. He said he was optimistic that new technologies using more readily available materials would be ready in a year or two.

 

Some members of Congress, though, are more skeptical about the time frame — and the cost. The Department of Homeland Security spent $230 million to develop the detection technology calling for helium-3.

 

From 2003 to 2009, the Isotope Program was selling the gas at a rate of about 30,000 liters a year, while the weapons program was producing only 8,000 to 10,000 liters, the accountability office found.

 

The Energy Department and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, have produced various isotopes for commercial and governmental use for decades.

 

Helium-3, once considered a waste product, is produced by the radioactive decay of tritium, a form of hydrogen used in nuclear weapons to increase the yield. But the United States stopped producing tritium in 1988 because of safety problems at the reactors that made it.

 

The Energy and Homeland Security Departments “built large, multibillion-dollar programs around an assumed endless supply” of helium-3, according to a staff report from the House science committee.

 

The detection program that relies on helium-3 has since been scaled back.

 

The Energy Department is negotiating with a nuclear power company in Ontario that might be able to supply some helium-3. Canadian reactors, unlike the models used in this country, produce significant quantities of tritium as a byproduct of electricity production. But working out the commercial arrangements and setting up the equipment necessary to gather the helium-3 will probably take years, experts say.

 

There are other ways to build equipment to detect smuggled nuclear material, but helium-3 is nontoxic and nonradioactive and is considered more accurate. The neutrons given off by plutonium and uranium are hard to detect, but when helium-3 is hit by a stray neutron, it creates a charged particle, which is readily detected and measured.

[Cancer]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Looks like some of the news items from Physics Today are finally bleeding over into the mainstream media.

[Tolan]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

The thought of NASA shutting down completely is, to me, simply horrible. The history of the agency alone is worth preserving, and the work it continues to do and to fund is invaluable. That said, my main concern is that work, not the name, so if it were re-booted or replaced with a different agency with the same basic premise of doing space research and exploration, I'm all for it. The main issue, as has been said, is funding, but that starts getting into a politics debate I don't want to start. Regardless, Sundog is right--a guaranteed budget would do wonders for NASA. As for focus, it lacks focus simply out of lack of purpose. Their job, mainly, was to go to the moon and build satellites, and they did both, which is why they've since been floundering. The problem is they really lack the ability to commission themselves, and no one else with the authority to tell them to focus somewhere really can afford to. If the President, or even a body of congress, were to tell them to go back to the moon, or to Mars, or look for life on whichever moon it is that might have it (Titan, was it?) I'm sure they set about to it right away. But in absence of imposed direction, they're attempting all direction at once, and NASA has never worked quickly when going in any but one direction.

 

-Tolan

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

The impression I get is that NASA, like some other big complicated organizations, has become overly bureaucratized. Too many people who are only there to swap paperwork with each other, and then tell other people what they CAN'T do. Without any real long-term vision or direction, this can only get worse.

[Markdoc]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Rather than over-bureaucratized, I think it has been over-politicicized, with programs being scrapped or starved of funds because they went against the Administration of the day's political agenda, while new programs were swiftly thrown together by the administration without consultation with NASA. A perfect example was Bush's vision for a successor to the shuttle, a manned mission to the Moon and a start on a manned mars mission. Three major challenges .... and no new budget for any of them. NASA was apparently supposed to carry all this stuff out with whatever change they could scrounge from behind couch cushions.

 

Ideally the agency would be turned into less of a political chew toy and given some autonomy. But still, while NASA is not functioning optimally, right now there is nobody else who could take over its job. And I think all of the rest of the universe is a little too important to simply ignore.

 

cheers, Mark

[megaplayboy]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Y'know, if they just transferred 10% of the DoD budget over to NASA(adding about 40-60 billion a year), we could probably have a moon base, mars landing and base, controlled fusion power, and space elevators by mid-century. Food for thought.

[Vondy]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

First, a massive portion of what NASA does is aeronautic R&D and not just the high-profile space mission. So, the real question is whether the "space" part should be shut down. I would answer no.

 

We still need launch vehicles for satellites, even if they are rockets, balloons with boosters, or something truly revolutionary like a laser propulsion elevator. There is also the satellites themselves, some government research, some military, and some commercial, which form the backbone of modern, global information culture.

 

I guess I'm saying nixing the "space" part of the mission isn't really the question. The REAL question is: should we kill the "exploration" part of the mission. I would answer no. BUT I do think we need to rethink and reorganize our goals. Why are we mounting the mission beyond symbolic boots on the ground?

 

What is our goal? Because how we invest and organize the "exploration" part of the mission can only flow for that. We're done beating the soviets and have no propaganda fueled cold-war space race to win. Are we seeking resources (what and from where?), orbital research and manufacturing stations, an SPS array? Each requires something very different than Apollo 11 or the space shuttles.

 

And, even if those missions are tenuous on an economic level, the long-term benefits of the space program are still there. Not just in expanding infrastructure, but in the R&D. I couldn't give a rodent's backside about an American flag on the moon and some inspirational words from Neil Armstrong. Those are attaboys. But all the technology and know-how we reaped from getting them there... THAT is a worthwhile investment.

 

So, what new space mission do we have that has benefits in terms of what we learn and build from doing it - and maybe has a benefit in of itself?

 

That is what the space program should be doing.

 

Boots on Mars for its own sake? A nice sentiment - but a potentially wasteful one.

[Vondy]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Y'know' date=' if they just transferred 10% of the DoD budget over to NASA(adding about 40-60 billion a year), we could probably have a moon base, mars landing and base, controlled fusion power, and space elevators by mid-century. Food for thought.[/quote']

 

Tell the military and intelligence communities you are constructing a massive communications and observation array for them up there and they might just go for it...

[Cancer]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Yeah, but then they'll do their best to control it, and there are known hazards to that. The flawed primary mirror in the Hubble is directly attributable to giving DoD too much control over fabrication of orbiting telescopes.

[Ragitsu]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Sad that money is even an issue when it comes to SPACE.

[Querysphinx]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

And I think all of the rest of the universe is a little too important to simply ignore.

 

cheers, Mark

 

You clearly have not been paying attention to American politics lately. Most if not all of our pols freely ignore anything, up to and including the laws of physics, that does not shove money down their throats. Most of the confederacy of dunces that makes up the voting public is just as bad.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Sad that money is even an issue when it comes to SPACE.

 

The one trope/meme I hate is the "why are we spending all this money on space exploration when we have so many problems down here?" It's a false dichotomy. Nothing stops us from spending money on both, except for the usual political/lobbying suspects. We can actually spend money on both guns and butter, to knock down another variant of this argument. What's missing, wrt to "our problems down here", is the political will/consensus on whether and how to address those problems.

[Cancer]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

... "why are we spending all this money on space exploration when we have so many problems down here?" ....

 

That quote is a specific version of a very common sentiment which is most accurately rendered, "why are we spending all this money on _________ instead of giving it to me?"

[novi]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

Something needs to be done with NASA. It's current structure is not conducive to accomplishing most of the goals people have in mind for it.

 

And this is one of the things Obama is doing right, no matter how much everyone is whining about it. He is getting NASA out of the space transportation business. As amazing and cool as all of their rockets are, they are still as expensive as they were 40 years ago. NASA, focused on science and exploration as it should be, looks to optimize every rocket they send up for maximum performance, rather than lowest cost. And to that end, every Space Shuttle launch costs between $100 million and $500 million, depending on how you do the accounting for it. Meanwhile, SpaceX has spent $300 million on the entire Falcon 9 program. So, why not let NASA concentrate on what it can do in space, rather than how to get there?

 

 

My other beef is with everyone who keeps talking about how we have to go to the moon to get helium 3. I hate to break all your little hearts, but that's never going to pan out. Everyone likes fusion, but one question for you: how does the energy produced by the reactions get converted into electricity to power your computer?

 

?

 

Buehler?

 

I thought as much. There are two methods, conventional heat cycles and direct conversion. And He3 is not the preferred fuel for either of those methods. Deuterium and Tritium are the preferred fuel for the heat cycle, and make much more radiation than a conventional nuclear plant when running, and requires large amounts of lithium to function. And there's already not quite enough lithium to meet world demand. And for direct conversion, regular hydrogen and boron work much, much better than He3 ever could, and is much less radioactive, too.

 

(The only reason no one talks about hydrogen/boron fusion is that it's harder to ignite than the other types. Practically impossible with magnetic confinement fusion. Laser fusion, on the other hand, could be possible within a decade, plus commercialization time...)

 

 

And all this ignores the real reason we need to go into space - we're running out of industrial materials on this planet. Metals like gallium, indium, antimony, or europium may not be familiar, but are vital for modern technology, and are in short supply. As in, there won't be enough to go around in less than a decade. Copper's a bit better, but you might recall stories of metal thieves from a few years back. That will only get more frequent as demand grows faster than we can mine more of it out of the ground. Even iron, the 4th most abundant element in the earth's crust, could be depleted; known, economical reserves could be gone in under a century.

 

Barring improbable, near-magic, and likely physical-law-violating advances in nanotechnology, that leaves extraterrestrial sources as the only viable means of supplying the demand. I don't know about you, but I rather like laptops and ipods and flat-panel TVs. And I'd rather we go into space than have to do without. And that is the real reason why we have to go into space - it's either that, or wars over every resource, not just oil and gold.

[Christopher]

Re: Shoule NASA be nixed?

 

And all this ignores the real reason we need to go into space - we're running out of industrial materials on this planet.

You are only accounting for the resources on land. But land only makes 30% of the surface of this planet. There are still a lot of resources in the sea.

So I don't think Iron will be our mayor reason to go into space. Not unless a moonbase is cheaper than a deep sea mining station (wich is unlikely, since transportation is much easier into the ocean).