The solution: STOP USING IT FOR STUPID shiat!!!

Seriously, a non-renewable resource that is essential for a ton of important scientific and medical applications and we're using it to blow up party balloons and talk funny.

We are pissing away our strategic reserve, and it really IS Bush's fault, he thought it is a waste. In ten years, an MRI is going to cost a fortune.

Essential for super conductivity.

Nickninja: The solution: STOP USING IT FOR STUPID shiat!!!

Seriously, a non-renewable resource that is essential for a ton of important scientific and medical applications and we're using it to blow up party balloons and talk funny.

There is simple not enough THIS in the world to sum up my feelings....

Riche: There's not a lot of helium here on Earth, so the Feds wisely set up a national stockpile-- that shiat has more important uses than making your voice sound funny-- Until 1996, when congress decided to say "FARK it" and started selling off the reserve for next to nothing. as a result of the dumping, prices got so low everybody has been squandering it, and when helium is gone, it's gone-- as in off to outer space.

Actually, that was specifically Newt Gingrich who decided that needed to be done.

bmwericus:
We are pissing away our strategic reserve, and it really IS Bush's fault

Well, clearly that means we must reelect the oba-messiah who reversed all of bush's flawed policies.

Tell us, when exactly does something become obama's responsibility in your derp?

emersonbiggins

--drill here.jpg

Funny you bring that up. The dims said there was no point in drilling as it would take 10 years to see any benifit from opening those fields.


Just last week was the 10 year anniversary of that claim. Happy anniversary. Enjoy your obama gas prices.

We've been wading through anything that burns, lubricates or catalyses like it falls from the sky for a couple of hundred years and guess what? Guess what! Go on, guess.. Ah ha ha! We're running out of all that sh*t. How do you $uppo$e that happened?

I think we need to get rid of Cryogenics before we get rid of the balloons.



/TMYK

rocketpants: Newt obviously has plans to harvest the vast helium repositories beneath the lunar surface.

Hey, the other person who saw that movie!

/it's my job to take care of you
//Sam

Girion47: Where did our current supply come from? I don't see that you could "mine" it, seems like it would escape as soon as you opened whatever cavity in the earth is holding it, Is there a way to sequester it from the atmosphere?

Unfortunately it's too diffuse to be extracted from the atmosphere. The problem is that helium atoms are light enough that at the upper reaches of the atmosphere (where although the temperature is low, individual particles are very "hot" due to high kinetic energy) their average velocity is greater than Earth's escape velocity. So, any helium released into the atmosphere eventually escapes to space.

The only way to get any more is wait millennia for the slow accumulation from alpha decay of radioactive material in Earth's crust, or harvest it from massive planets whose gravity is high enough that it can't escape so have a significant amount of it. Neither solution is feasible of course.

Helium is scientifically irreplaceable so should be conserved starting now. The price should be allowed to rise until it's too expensive to waste on balloons and blimps.

Last time I posted something similar in the thread about the guy wasting a load of it on a one-use balloon to break a skydiving record I was told I must be a hit at parties... lol. Yeah, reality can be no fun. So I'm glad this issue's finally getting some press.

Riche: GAT_00:

Actually, that was specifically Newt Gingrich who decided that needed to be done.

That makes sense. Stupid and short-sighted, that's Gingrich. Still, Clinton signed off on it.

Newt obviously has plans to harvest the vast helium repositories beneath the lunar surface.

Good reason to hurry the fark up with getting fusion working. Helium is a byproduct.

No big surprise. The US has been divesting itself of its huge stockpile of helium for a while now. Prices will continue to go up.