Massive helium field found - scientists calling it game changer

[Kimmo]

@Brainspore

Luxury Zeppelins or GTFO

Actually, despite the Hindenburg, hydrogen zeppelins are totally feasible.

[Michael_R_Smith]

We’ll be using vacuum for buoyancy before long. Cant see it running out for decades.

[Michael_R_Smith]

@Enkita

Saturnine satellites

I have long wondered if there might be buried fossil oxidizers on Titan. Much like our fossil fuels.

[L_Mariachi]

@Enkita

When the helium is gone, it’s gone.

There’s helium-3 on the moon. Slippery stuff though.

[anon47741163]

I’ve been hoping for this for a long time now, haven’t seen any schemes for accomplishing it yet.

[Enkita]

@Kimmo

Actually, despite the Hindenburg, hydrogen zeppelins are totally feasible.

Feasible but, as people keep finding out, not economic.

[Enkita]

@anon47741163

If they needed to keep outside air from infiltrating the system, I suspect having an inert lighter than air gas was better than argon, which would have sunk instead.

AFAIK the purge was needed to make the tanks safe for inspection. Among factors that might be relevant:
1.Ten times the mass of argon would be needed for the same volume.
2.Being more massive, argon diffuses more slowly (about three times slower than helium) due to the root M term in the gas equation. This would slow the purging effect in such a large tank.

The amount of helium used must have been enormous and shows one of the problems of scaling spaceflight to commercial levels - most technologies consume large amounts of relatively scarce resources. Commercial aircraft are designed to use the lowest cost highest volume materials possible - aluminium, steel, kerosene, whereas rocket engines do things like use silver as a consumable coolant.

[Kimmo]

Now that would take some serious engineering…

[CLamb]

@SomeDude

Until now, the gas has been found in small amounts accidentally during oil and gas drilling.

Generally, the workers have realized these accidental findings when their voices all suddenly rose two octaves.

Reality is almost as strange. It was first discovered when the gas instead of burning actually extinguished a fire. http://www.eccchistory.org/DexterHelium.htm

[dave_b]

I thought it was found in the sun through spectroscopy. Hence the name.

[CLamb]

Yes, you are right. I should’ve said the first time it was discovered during oil and gas drilling. This is also the first time it was discovered in significant quantities on Earth.

[bobechs]

@cheem

If you used fusion to power the United States, you’d need to generate about [3 TW of energy]… if you powered the United States entirely from fusion reactors, you’d make roughly… 2.3 million cubic meters per year. …[But] the United States consumed 34 million cubic meters of helium in 2014.

So, fusion isn’t going to solve your helium supply problem.

So, then we’d have to use fifteen times more electricity than we do now.

That’s a challenge I think we can rise to.

[Jim_Kirk]

Helium is also now being used in hard disk drives…

http://geology.com/stories/13/new-uses-of-helium/

[Jim_Kirk]

Kind of boring though. He doesn’t react to anything…

[ficuswhisperer]

Great. All I can think of now is Julie Andrews spinning in mid air after seeing the title.

[cjankelson]

Ah yes. Reminds me of one of Asimov’s Mysteries. Some fella plans a murder by covering an oxygen tank (in the intended victim’s lab) with a catalyst – instead of the Methane tank – because he forgot he’s back on earth rather than some methane-atmosphere planet.

[Enkita]

@Kimmo

Now that would take some serious engineering

Just make big tanks out of really thin unobtainium foil, and suck the air out. It’s no more improbable than the ideas that so many non-engineers come up with for commercial products.

[Kimmo]

Evacuated aerogel, maybe…

[anon47741163]

“Helium? I hardly know him!”

[dave_b]

Use an inflatable material with spars inside.
Run cables to the outside of the balloon. Use these to tension the spars so that you have said material being pulled out to match the inward force.