ISROundabout
G: You want to hear something hilarious?
G: Depressing and hilarious. One of those things.
M: go on
G: So they ask the ISRO chairman why they want a moon mission (launching tomorrow)
G: and the chairman says
G: it is so that they can go see if there is Helium-3 there
G: He wants to get it, send it back here, so that we can use it in fusion reactors
G: Then, he wants to see if there’s water there so that we can establish a moon base
G: And after that he wants to electrolyse the water near the moon base to make hydrogen and oxygen
G: and use that to power a spacecraft to Mars
G: BRILLIANT!
M: practicality fail
G: Totally!
G: I laughed so much
M: rube goldberg wins this round
G: ha ha
G: Oh man, he wants to get He-3 for fusion reactors
G: Ha ha
M: wait isn’t he3 an unstable isotope?
G: Beats me, but a fusion reactor doesn’t exist except in Back To The Future
M: wait fusion reactor he said?
M: oh jeez
G: Totally
G: Mars mission is even better
M: he should have went on
M: go to mars
M: find life there
M: wait for them to evolve
M: then help them built society
M: make spacecraft
G: ha ha
M: come back to earth
G: ha
G: haha ha
M: and help us out with our problems
G: Brilliant!
G: You should email him.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
To be fair, he also said that his grandmother called him nallakutty. No, seriously. I was wondering where the whole thing was going at that point.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Fusion reactors are not such a joke and there have been experimental ones since 1956.
even india has one operational since 1989 and another being built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak
and the latest next generation of sustainable fusion reaction design is being constructed by a consortium of 7 nations including india.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
not so funny after all is it.
January 7th, 2009 at 2:17 am
None of which use Helium as fuel. None of which actually generate more energy than they consume.
Nope, still pretty funny, IMO. I also hate to explain a joke, but the funniness of the whole situation arises from the fact that the Chandrayaan mission had certain clear objectives – none of which include setting up a moon base fuelled by He-3 in order to send people to Mars!¹
Man, you should have read that article (Times of India or Indian Express or Mumbai Mirror or something), it was crazy funny.
¹ Which the chairman did mention in the actual interview, the sensationalised version is probably what G made that statement on.
January 7th, 2009 at 9:41 am
You should read your own links, Xavier. From what I can see, those are not fusion reactors but experimental technologies that might be used in the creation/working of a fusion reactor in the future.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
true they are experimental and also true that they havnt been able to sustain a fusion reaction for more than a few minutes.
but what im saying is that by the time they find the he-3 on the moon and get the technology to bring it back here, these experimental fusion reactors would have made way for commercial ones.
these are very long term projects theyr talking about here. should take them 30 – 60 years atleast
January 7th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
This isn’t very practical. Does the unimaginable cost and risk in operating moon missions offset the gain?
Is it not much simpler to work on efficient use of existing natural resources?
January 8th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
They will fail a thousand times before they can get He-3 from the moon. They might as well wait for some other country to do it and get blackmailed while trying to buy it from them.