[Lx]

It also bodes ill for the prospect of fusion using helium-3, a rare helium isotope that is missing a neutron. Physicists have yet to achieve pure helium-3 fusion, but if they did, we’d have a clean, virtually infinite power source. Or so the theory goes.

So in other words, helium 3 fusion is twenty years in the future regardless of how much we have?

[cripplecreek]

Better add at least 10 years on top of that while we try to extricate ourselves from the outer space treaty.

[bksanders]

"So in other words, helium 3 fusion is twenty years in the future…"

The predictability and grasp of our future is in logarithmic proportion to our willingness to shun the norm,
…unfettered by reward or acknowledgement, without fear of either embarrassment or denigration.
What was unthinkable only a decade ago is so common a thing today as to be held with total regarded as unimportant.
Don't sell the American entrepreneur short… or sumpin' like dat.

[albionin]

We will in the not to distant future achieve it though and it will take that long to build the infrastructure to mine it on the moon. Plus there are other uses for it I’m sure. From what I have read the fusion reaction would produce electrons directly and no harmful radiation. I’d rather we were spending the money we have sunk into solar and wind to try and achieve HE3 fusion. Think about it. If we are going to have fusion power in 20-30 years solar and wind will be so obsolete that no one will want them. Why when one clean reactor could replace hundreds of square miles of wind turbines. I say we burn coal and oil like it’s going out of style. Drill as much as we can because in hopefully 30 years we will have the ultimate power source and the stronger our economy is the faster we will get to reliable fusion.