Re: US Intuitive Machines set for second moon landing in February

On 11/01/2025 7:29 pm, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 11/01/2025 04:17, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 11/01/2025 3:58 am, john larkin wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:47:04 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
>

Intuitive Machines set for second landing, looking to build a lunar economy
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/intuitive-machines-set-for-second-landing-looking-to-build-a-lunar-economy/

>
A "lunar economy" sounds silly. There's nothing up there but dirt and
radiation.

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And a whole lot of helium-3.
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https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.2020-4001

 Everything I've read about fusion power states that to start it an immense amount of power is required.

Then you haven't read much. Cold fusion wouldn't take much power at all, if it worked.

How are you going to get that power source to the moon? And if you can do that, why not use that to provide lunar power needs? Or is it that you're going to do something like charge a large bank of capacitors from solar cells on the moon? How are you going to get those capacitors and solar cells to the moon? And so on.
 By the way, whoever wrote that abstract didn't bother checking it: "... from 3He, fusion power can be provided to terrestrial electrical needs and to interplanetary travel." Did they /really/ mean "terrestrial" electrical needs? Or did they intend to say "lunar" electrical needs?
 You might also like to consider a couple of comments from <https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Preparing_for_the_Future/Space_for_Earth/Energy/Helium-3_mining_on_the_lunar_surface>:
 "...Gerald Kulcinski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is another leading proponent. He has created a small reactor at the Fusion Technology Institute, but so far it has not been possible to create the helium fusion reaction with a net power output."
 "Not everyone is in agreement that Helium 3 will produce a safe fusion solution.

We do have an unlimited supply of people willing to express opinions about stuff they known very little about. Some - like Cursitor Doom - seem to search out the most fatuous misinformation they can find and repost that.

In an article entitled "Fears over Factoids" in 2007, the theoretical physicist Frank Close famously described the concept as "moonshine"."

https://hb11.energy/
is perhaps also moonshine, but they do seem to be attracting investors. Boron-hydrogen fusion does have the advantage of not generating neutrons, so the hardware would last a lot longer if they ever got it to work (and the prospects are rather better than they are for cold fusion).
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney