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Comment Re:Reminds me of my favorite T-shirt (Score 1) 69

CERES

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1801-c.1856

First Steps to Astronomy and Geography (1828) lists the planets as, "Eleven: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel."

Unfortunately Herschel sounded too much like a German term for rectum, so they changed the name to end that stupid joke once and for all.

Comment Re:It's about time. (Score 2) 113

The math also changes quite a bit if controlled fusion becomes a thing, because Helium is the "ash" product of controlled D-T fusion.

What math? You did none.
Currently earth makes around 10^20 joules of electricity per year. At 3x10^14J/kg, that would require on the order of 1000 tons of DT fuel, and so helium "ash".
Current helium extraction rate is around 30,000 tons per year.
So yeah, fusion on a scale a order of magnitude greater than current total energy production could produce a useful amount of helium.
It is conceivable, barely.

Comment Re:It's about time. (Score 1) 113

peak funny was probably the suggestion about the gas giants. We want Helium, not Hydrogen.

Gas giants have helium. Was that supposed to be a joke?
The problem is the depth of their gravity wells. https://xkcd.com/681/
I suppose you could try a high-altitude flyby to scoop some of Saturn's atmosphere, 3% Helium. Still insanely expensive.

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