I have goodish news. We aren’t going to run out of helium any time soon.
Based on current rates of helium consumption the US alone has something like 250+ years of stored helium. We pumped a porous mountain full of all the helium we could back in the 60s and it’s been kept stable since.
We still have no alternative to helium in a few of its most important use cases, but there is price where the helium we haven’t bothered collecting will become cost effective to go get. Those untapped reserves are estimated 3-10 times what we have ever used.
I’m also fairly certain that we will have figured out a way to produce helium in the next hundred years. We know how it came to exist naturally it’s really just the matter of someone being crazy enough to try and replicate those underground conditions and spend the money on the project.
I have faith that helium is a solvable problem for the human race.
Because of how entirely permanent this is, it pays to look far - like millions of years. That’s what it took to accumulate.
We know how it came to exist naturally it’s really just the matter of someone being crazy enough to try and replicate those underground conditions and spend the money on the project.
How that works is just normal radioactive decay. The conditions aren’t actually important.
It’s probable we’ll be able to make a bit with fusion, but the amounts will be small. IIRC we also collect some from decaying radioactive things in manmade settings, but again, it’s hard to beat an chunk entire planet underneath a salt dome. Next options are harvesting it from space (but it’s really spread out) or a gas giant (but there’s stupid amounts of gravity).
I have goodish news. We aren’t going to run out of helium any time soon.
Based on current rates of helium consumption the US alone has something like 250+ years of stored helium. We pumped a porous mountain full of all the helium we could back in the 60s and it’s been kept stable since.
We still have no alternative to helium in a few of its most important use cases, but there is price where the helium we haven’t bothered collecting will become cost effective to go get. Those untapped reserves are estimated 3-10 times what we have ever used.
I’m also fairly certain that we will have figured out a way to produce helium in the next hundred years. We know how it came to exist naturally it’s really just the matter of someone being crazy enough to try and replicate those underground conditions and spend the money on the project.
I have faith that helium is a solvable problem for the human race.
Because of how entirely permanent this is, it pays to look far - like millions of years. That’s what it took to accumulate.
How that works is just normal radioactive decay. The conditions aren’t actually important.
It’s probable we’ll be able to make a bit with fusion, but the amounts will be small. IIRC we also collect some from decaying radioactive things in manmade settings, but again, it’s hard to beat an chunk entire planet underneath a salt dome. Next options are harvesting it from space (but it’s really spread out) or a gas giant (but there’s stupid amounts of gravity).
The sun has shitloads, we could mine the sun!
Just take a scoop out and bring it back. Should be easy right? Lol