[Cyrien]

Iron is the break even point for both fusion and fission for producing energy. You can fusion anything upto iron and produce energy and you can fission anything down to iron and produce energy.

And while hydrogen alone gets you the best reaction energywise you have other considerations. Helium-3 Fusion reactions as opossed to the current dueterium/tritium reaction process would produce less radioactive biproducts and wastes. While the current process has at worst materials that will need to be stored away for 50 to 100 years before being safe, Helium-3 biproducts are much safer and less radioactive. Helium-3 is extremely rare on Earth however.

Edit: Also Helium-3 has more problems with the containment field and some other areas of design physics. You can't just take a Hydrogen fusion design and use it for Helium. Helium-3 is more efficient for our energy production needs. Note: Even on the moon He-3 is very rare. 4 or 5 parts per billion in lunar soil. You would have to process 100 tonnes of lunar soil to get 1 tonne of He-3. However it would take 25 tonnes of He-3 in a fusion reaction to create enough energy to power all of the US for one year.

I would say He-3 is a viable power source for any future moon colonies but more efficient and even safer would probably be large scale solar generators at the light pole of the moon which is always covered in light. I wouldn't count on He-3 as a power source down here or other places without a native supply however.

[ November 28, 2003, 03:13: Message edited by: Cyrien ]