This story has more to do with the morons at the BBC, and government sponsored service and offers a warning for US documentarians as well.
Making up or misquoting facts for ratings is beyond simply unethical. It’s wrong and can lead to a misinformed public.
Want in on this dog fight?
Professor Schmitt is a consultant engaged in research with the Fusion Technology Institute on the utilization of resources from space, including the feasibility of using helium-3 from the moon to supply energy on Earth. He also teaches a popular course, Resources from Space. An astronaut on the Apollo 17 mission to the moon, Schmitt has first-hand knowledge of the space environment.
This is the first time in a long time that I have seen the word “factoid” used correctly. A “factoid” is something that looks like a fact, but isn’t, as an android looks like a man, but isn’t. It isn’t a “little fact” or an interesting bit of trivia. The word was coined by Norman Mailer. It is properly used of, for instance, fictitious but plausible incidents inserted into biographical novels or films, particularly hostile ones, that make a character look bad.
The He3 on the moon is regularly cited by supporters of a return to the moon on FR. This is the first I’ve heard that it’s pretty much a myth.
Anyone know if “Angels and Demons” was ever made into a movie. Loved the Book!
Doomsday scenarios are not new.
A small,but not insignificant, minority of Manhattan Project physicists thought that the Trinity test could touch off a chain reaction that would consume the whole atmosphere.
Fortunately for us, they were wrong. There’s still air here. I’ve been to White Sands, and there’s still air there, too.
Before the first open air tests of the atomic bomb were conducted at Los Alamos, there was concern that the nuclear reaction, once begun, would continue into the atmosphere and destroy life on earth. Oddly, they did it anyway.
Helium 3 has a MUCH better use than as a fusion fuel, if you only knew... As to it’s abundance, Cold Fusion produces H3(tritium)in great profusion. H3 decays by the beta process into He3 w/a 12.5 year half life.
