Why going to the moon may be absoluetly nessecary.

I was watching a movie last night on a science channel here in Canada called Space. In that channel they usually show clippings of science news. Now I like looking at pictures of the galaxies and planets but yesterday I heard something that changed the entire perspective on what the future economy will have to look like. I am no scientist (I can tell you that) so I don’t exactly what this entails, but in order for hydrogen fuel cells to work we need Platinum. The world supply of Platinum is way too low to make a hydrogen economy viable by the looks of it.

A mere 100 million kilos in the whole world, South Africa as usual has the largest reserves of Platinum in the world at 70 million. The expert said that the moon may have enough Platinum to allow for the mass production of hydrogen fueled celled cars. Does this mean I support the US moon program? No, the reason being is that the US cannot afford it, but I do support a multi-national and private enterprise to make the moon viable for exploitation. If we want a better economy for our children and for our environment we need to expend billions to make sure it happens.

 

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I am skeptical about hydrogen fuel cells really being any kind of solution to our energy problems. Hydrogen isn't available for free like fossil fuels, you have to use energy to make it.

Hydrogen fuel cells may prove valuable in small devices where it could offer longer periods of operation between recharging/refilling than batteries do, but I think it is not too likely that we will be seeing many hydrogen cars ever. Why bother converting fossil energy to hydrogen? It won't necessarily save pollution, it will just concentrate it at once source. I think it is far more likely that we will look to bio-fuels in the effort for a sustainable energy economy.

Plus you have to figure that moving significant quantities of metal from the moon to the earth would be ridiculously expensive in terms of energy. And again, that too would have to be ultimately based on fossil fuels, nuclear power, wind and solar or bio-fuels.

 

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It isn't really vitally necessary to use platinum in fuel cells. It's the most commonly used material because it has the convenient property of being able to act as both a catalyst and an electrode, but there are ways to make fuel cells with platinum. Of course they would probably be more expensive.

And really, the idea of setting up any kind of industrial-scale platinum mining operation on the moon is pretty laughable with our current launch technology. It's likely that by the time we're able to economically built giant platinum mines on the moon our economy will be powered by something else.

And TaoDervish is correct; since we don't have any good ways to get hydrogen for free, it isn't really a source of energy so much as a way of storing energy that's been produced by some other means.

 

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As the Moon is most likely a chunk of the Earth that was torn off, why is it richer in platinum than what's left behind?

Surely, we just need to dig deeper into our own terrestrial mines.

 

Getting PLatinum from the moon to the earth is apice of cake. All you need is an electromagnetic launcher, and you can drop huge chunks of metal anywhere on earth. Of course you could also devastate cities, but hey, thats progress for you.

I notice governor Schwarzeneger is wanting to change CAlifornia into a nydrogen economy or something.

 

Is seems that platinum is not necessarily a requirement for fuel cells - Astris Energi

 

Cannot afford it? The US can afford to spend almost a trillion in a stupid war but not to go to the moon to get an important resource? Am I mistaken or the US government is simply retarded? :bugeye:

 

That’s a stupid argument. Wasting money on one thing doesn’t justify wasting money on another. The question isn’t “can we get the platinum?” but rather “is the platinum worth what it would cost us to get it?”

 

It is better to waste money on something that will give you something thatn on something that will only create debts...

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you've just let out a "A VERY TOP, TOP, TOP SECRET" Mister,
DELETE ALL YOUR COMPUTER FILES, HIDE, DON'T ANSWER THE DOOR, MOVE, CHANGE YOUR NAME, NEVER, NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TELL ANY YOUR NEW NAME OR NEW ADDRESS!!! DON'T JUST STAND THERE READING THIS, RUN!!!!

 

I can just imagine what will happen to the atmosphere and environment after 1) equipment, materials, people will be delivered to the moon 2) 100 millions kilos of Pt will be transported back to Earth by few hundreds thousands of the conventional rockets. It will be a disaster. Face it, without "warp" drive etc., talks about exploiting mineral (or any) resources of other planets/moon are just BS. Humanity may play with space for the curiosity/spying/communication sake. Commercial mining use is way out of the rich of homo sapiens.

BTW, Pt indeed is not required for fuel cells BUT other materials will corrode too fast. So fast that Pt-less fuel cells will be impractical for the use outside of labs.

 

Check this out;

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomf...move_url=http://www.electronpowersystems.com/


http://www.bionik.tu-berlin.de/institut/xs2solar

http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article3856.html

http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/h2homesystem.pdf


http://www.hionsolar.com/n-hion96.htm

http://www.chevrontexaco.com/technologyventures/commercialize_tech/hydrogen_production.asp

These are but a few ways rather than using platinum to produce hydrogen. There are others just Google "hydrogen production".

 

Hi cosmic,
The question was not of producing Hydrogen, but of utilising the hydrogen in fuel cellst o produce energy.

 

Why not just use the hydrogen that is produced and pump it into tanks located inside the trunk of the cars? As we already use LPG to fuel many cars and trucks they could set up the same way to fuel the vehicles as they use now with the LPG.

http://www.lpga.co.uk/automotive_new April 2004.htm

 

I think one could thing that could be used to generate power is CO2! Because then we would have a cycle where we produce the thing and then we use it as energy! But my question is: can CO2 be an energy source?

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There are many types of rockets that don't produce any pollution. Returning vehicles wouldn't necessarily even be powered.

I think that perhaps it would be more economical to give chemists a few billion dollars to solve this problem, rather than giving the aerospace companies trillions.

 

Making the earth work for our species would be a lot cheaper than trying to utilize the moon.

What scares me about the the space program is that if our elite think they and their families have somewhere to wait out a disaster then they might lose their commitment to avoiding disasters on earth.

 

What kind of disaster are you talking about?

 

going to the moon to get any resourse to use on earth is idiotic imo,
as it would be prohibitively expensive

anyhow we have all the energy right here,such as water from which you can extract hydrogen thru electrolysis,perhaps using sunlight PV panels

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fuel cells are a pie in the sky fantasy(too expensive and inneficient) and completely unnecesary,
how about something like this
www.mdi.lu/eng/index.php

 

Fuel cells are impractical (for the past 50 years

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) but they are quite efficient. Theoretical efficiency coefficient of a fuel cell may approach 100% (if memory does not betray me).