> He3?  Ha, for a minute there I thought it was going to be some silly
> technology that is largely theoretical, no commercial success, not 
> even out
> of the lab, no supporting infrastructure, unknown costs & risks, and 
> no
> efficiency results.

> Apart from a few minor 'easily solved' quibbles, He3 looks good.

A mere matter of engineering :-)
The sun has it down pat already.

But, yes.
It WAS meant to bea pie in the (literally) sky comment.
BUT, also, its nature is such that it completely trashes the peak oil 
arguments.

A major problem is that "people" tend to take the line of immediate 
least resistance rather than the line of optimum outcome. Very much 
the same as natural selection insists on climbing isolated little 
development peaks and then getting irrevocably trapped except through 
outside intervention. [[Still wearing Nomex overalls]].

We could have had fusion by now if we'd been serious about it as a 
planet. If eg we needed it to power the space tugs that were going to 
save us from the incoming comet/ whatever due to arrive 50 years from 
now, then we'd have it going in a year or two. The first strings of 
prime numbers from space may be what it takes :-).

If we'd wanted we could have had a the first woman on Mars by now (if 
not the first man on Venus) using 1960s technology.

And we could have had nuclear powered spacecraft using A bombs for 
propulsion. Sometimes not achieving ones aims can be positive :-). (I 
like the sheer cheek of the Orion concept).

The first net energy gain fusion is going to be radioactively dirty, 
because it's far far easier to produce and contain the environment 
needed. Which still happens to be very very very hard.

Efficiency results don't matter fwiw. We have proof of concept in two 
arenas - one you can see daily (use very dark glasses) and the other 
we hope never to see again. If we can make it run at all it will be 
just fine, thank you very much :-). 1% over neutral would do and much 
more is likely.

Fusion probably won't happen anyime soon (athough some of the laser 
pellet implosion approaches keep threatening to provide the necessary 
breakthrough - but so far not delivering. . And He3 fusion will take 
longer.

> So does shale oil,

peak oil

> that gets looked at every time oil

peak oil

> Better than growing corn for biofuel, I guess.  Great option for 
> Australia,
> considering the droughts and all.  So, current thinking is we need a 
> solar
> farm to desalinate seawater to make hydrogen to fuel the trucks that 
> carry
> this water to the farms to grow the corn to turn into ethanol that 
> we put in
> our cars so we can drive to the beach.  I know there's a flaw in 
> that
> somewhere...

Ineed. This is exactly what the peak oil evangelists are talking 
about. Net energy use exceeds gains from won resources.

Excellent multi-production-region peak oil graph

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hubbert_world_2004.png

Looks like we are right on the summit now :-).


Strategic significance of america's Oil Shale Resources.
45 pages

        http://www.evworld.com/library/Oil_Shale_Stategic_Significant.pdf




        Russell


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