Great – more trouble for USNE! Reckall and his controlers have their work cut out.

I never envisaged the noncons being cyborgs as such – that sort of modification sounds too expensive to bother with when slaves are cheap and easily replaced. But then again, in this future world everyone carries a neural plant as standard and could therefore be considered to be cyborg to a degree.

I also had the idea that the noncons were meat, or mostly so. But that does not rule out that perhaps there has been some crude attempts at neural rewiring, or just psychological engineering.

It’s great to have you on board – I think JonB is going to take it from here.

Thanks for the encouragement. I found an early reference to an autoport, which I took as permission to configure noncons as machines specialized and equipped for their tasks. A suitable challenge for Reckall.

this all has great collaborative feel. Achievement is seen in each segment from each of you. Damn I cannot wait to work with you all!

The autoport: I’d casually thought of that as some sort of machine rather than an augmented human; the later is a more interesting interpretation.

Ooh, I like it. Very tense, and her panic comes through nicely.

Gripping stuff.

Minor point: Helium is inert and will not react with anything to form an ore. It can be blasted into a C60 cage, but that is not a natrual process. In its natural state, Helium (3 or 4) will exist in gaseous form, as discrete atoms.

The anger and desperation of the mother there is palpable, as is her drive to find her child and the danger faced by anyone standing in her way.

Like it.

Rats, I should have realized that after reading about solar wind. If it’s a gas entrapped in rocky debris, mining it in a microgravity environment would sure be different than I imagined. I guess this is where John W. Campbell gets off.

Wikipedia’s article on Helium-3 appears to suggest it can be mined in the conventional manner, by processing (extremely) large amounts of regolith. I bow to any specialists in the subject, however.

Damn it HSAR, you’ve revealed my source (of this, and all other such scientific knowledge).

I wonder what happens to it in this future?

Depends on the definition of “ore” I guess. Helium won’t react with anything, but that doesn’t stop it from becoming trapped in regloith. It’s entirely possible to include this in the definition of “ore”.

Say, ethelthefrog, you seem like the sort of entity that might know this. Could a mine of 3He-saturated regolith be sabotaged by setting off explosives to agitate the stuff?

Nope. As I mentioned, Helium is inert. You can’t get it to react with anything, so setting off a big explosion will just make a hole in the rock. Doing so will release a lot of the stored gas, which could be collected for later use. Not a bad mining technique if you don’t much care for the aesthetic grace of the asteroid you’re making holes in, but not a great sabotage.

I can see that Helium 3 would be useful as a fuel for fusion reactors, but creating the conditions for fusion is very hard indeed. Setting off a few bombs in an environment where the He3 is sparsely distributed in a load of rock isn’t going to release any of that nuclear energy.

Nice idea, but the physics doesn’t stack up. Sorry.

That’s not what I meant. The helium isn’t bonded with the rock (not ore), true? So if the rock is agitated, wouldn’t the helium be released? I read that on earth free helium escapes into space; so wouldn’t it just “disappear”?

Ah. Looks like I got the wrong end of the stick. I guess that any mining operation can be sabotaged by blowing it up. A 3He mine is no different in that regard.

On Earth, you are correct, helium is so light and, therefore, so buoyant in our atmosphere that it just keeps rising until it reaches space. This rising is dependent upon there being an atmosphere to rise through (bubbles rise through water but stop rising when they reach the surface). Everything depends on the exact environment of the mine (I confess I haven’t read the backstory). In a microgravity environment, there’s not going to be much to hold the helium down. The explosion is going to accelerate it in all directions, which will cause most of it to be lost to space, I guess.

Re-re-reading… It depends on how the He is stored within the regolith. If it’s just sitting between the stones, giving it a shake might free the helium to escape. If it’s stored within little pockets inside the individual stones, shaking isn’t going to make much difference.

That said, in a microgravity environment, with a lack of atmosphere, just shaking the regolith isn’t going to make the helium rise particularly, as rising is dependent upon a heavier atmosphere falling at the same time. To get that sort of behaviour, you need sufficient gravity to maintain an atmosphere.

Awesome. Not sure if I’ll use the idea, but every day I learn something is a good day. Thanks!