Ya, it's a real problem. Helium is artificially cheap and we are running out at an alarming rate. We throw tons of the stuff away every year in party baloons and other silly things when we need to save it for future use in medical equipment and HDDs.
In 50 years we are really going to kick ourselves for our collective short-sightedness on such things.
My understanding is that the US is selling off their reserve and so the market price is artificially lowered. The problem with He is that it escapes the atmosphere so it is the one truly non-renewable resource.
The US had a strategic helium reserve that it is shutting down (Federal Helium Reserve) due to a law passed in 1996. In doing so, they are selling off their excess helium. In response, helium producers slashed production rather than face low prices. So, there was a temporary artificial helium shortage.
In the mean time, Qatar tripled production and the problem is starting to go away.
There about 40B m^3 of He in the world, and we use 180M m^3 per year. At the current rate of use, that gives us 222 years, assuming it is all exploitable, etc.
Meh, Jupiter is roughly 10% helium, and Neptune is 19%. By the time we run out of helium here on earth, the cost of space access should be low enough to make mining that practical.
Even if it's very expensive to mine, we won't ever run out of it (Jupiter is very big). It would just be stupid expensive and as such reserved for important things.
By the time we run out of helium, we would long have ran out a number of cheap abundant resources, without which space travel will be considerably less affordable than it is today. Nations will be too invested in war over the last bits of clean water and fertile land to devote resources to space mining.
Jupiter is very, very far, Neptune - ever further. Harvesting it in orbit of such massive planets will require massive and immensely durable and thus heavy spacecraft, which would be immensely more expensive to build, and exponentially more expensive than that to run.
It will cost trillions to just put a harvester/tanker in operation, and it will only deliver one load in a decade or so, and it is not clear how many loads it will deliver before it breaks.
You don't need to send the mining spacecraft back and forth, just cheap tugs with highly efficient electric propulsion (ion engines, very low thrust, insanely efficient). The length of the trip doesn't matter if you have a lot of them doing the route regularly, just like how the travel time of an oil pipeline doesn't matter if you have a constant rate of flow.
Would it be very expensive, even with upcoming dramatic reductions in launch costs? Sure. At that point, helium would be reserved for important things due to the price.
The Apollo program costed 200+ billion in 2015 dollars just to get several 4 ton containers to the moon. Launching durable high volume high pressure tanks sure won't be cheap. Using inflatable low pressure balloons is not applicable in the atmosphere of giant planets, although it will make landing on Earth very easy. There is the possibility to use heavy high pressure tanks to transport from atmosphere to high orbit and fill balloons there. But still, it will be too expensive, it will be cheaper to burn energy to force fusion just for the sake of producing helium than transporting it from Jupiter.
The expected "reduction in launch costs", if it even manifests, will be under the form of higher profit margins for the companies performing the launches. The price drop for the consumer will be a tiny fraction of the savings in cost. I am high skeptical when it comes to reusing launch vehicles, seeing how they still often can't pull off one single launch.
Fusion will never work. It is a boondoggle for the world and a cash cow for a selected few. In stars fusion occurs easily due to high pressure which is "for free", here on Earth we don't have such density, so fusion reactions consume considerable amount of energy, that will always exceed the amount you can pull out of the fusion reaction. You can force it but you can't really milk it.
I don't think fusion ignition is the problem. They have lasers to mimic the temperature/pressure of the stars. The problem is to sustain it without blowing out the reactor.
Ignorance is bliss. Helium problem is real but not imminent so no one cares. Regulate, hah, deregulate is the mantra. There is no long term free market. You need regulation to keep market from collapsing to singlularity =few mega corporations and no competition.
-- We throw tons of the stuff away every year in party baloons and other silly things when we need to save it for future use in medical equipment and HDDs.
stop bellyaching!!! this is American capitalism: only the short term matters, and I'll screw anybody including my next generation, in order to make an extra buck today.
Helium is recycled. I would expect 100% of the helium in helium balloons would return to the atmosphere. The helium either: slowly escapes at ground level; is suddenly released at ground level by the cleaners et. al. bursting the balloons; or released into the higher atmosphere where the pressure is lower and the balloon expands and burst. Helium back into the atmosphere where a factory sucks it back in and extracts the Helium again.
Nop. Helium, like hydrogen, is light enough to escape the atmosphere into outer space. Without constant dumping on the atmosphere from other sources, eventually there would be none to be distilled.
I guess you have read it too. Anyway, I do agree it needs to be conserved as it should be left for more important or expensive purpose such as super cooling. Don't worry though, I'm confident that SSDs will be the choice of enterprises for its higher density (soon), performance, and reliability in the near future.
you should be way more concerned about fossil fuel than Helium. There is % wise an insane amount of helium more than there is any fossil fuel left even on the best estimates.
The US helrium reserve had to be brought down (government rule) and infact the US supplies about 80% of the world helium us which just the US gathers. consider the amount then that is still left in the world. The way we are going right now we will probably destroy the polar ice caps faster than losing out on Helium.
Ways that we could 'manufacture' helium now (with sufficient funds):
1) Alpha radiation is helium atoms. Therefore generating high alpha-radiation sources can be used to 'farm' helium.
2) As helium is the second lightest element, it can, literally, be made by fissioning any of the heavier 100 elements that exist (might require successive fissioning of heavier to lighter, then fissioning those lighter elements etc).
Potential ways to manufacture helium that might be viable within the next ~50 years or so: 1) Fusion of hydrogen into helium. This of course assumes we ever get working fusion!
Potential ways to obtain helium that might be viable in the next ~100 years or so: 1) mining from the gas giants, most likely Saturn. Saturn's magnetic field and gravity are much, much less than Jupiters, therefore it is a more viable mining target than Jupiter. And, while the same is true to an even greater extent for Uranus and Neptune, they are much, much further away than Saturn. Also, Saturn has a moon, Titan, in orbit that has atmospheric pressure not too much different from earth's, while having less gravity, which would make it a good location for a base of operations (assuming it's not 100% automated).
Holy cats! 2.4PB of storage per rack! I was perfectly content with the 7 3TB drive in my home server... not I feel that I need more even though I don't have a use for it... *yet*
I just thinking out loud here, but why do they fill the drive with He when they could just pump out the drive to a lower pressure? Both would reduce turbulance due to friction with the atmosphere. Perhaps building a case capable of widthstanding the pressure differential is much more expensive than a case that can remain hermetically sealed for the lifetime of the drive? Perhaps an atmosphere is needed for convection of heat? Again, just wondering out loud. If anyone knows the answer go ahead and jump in.
I agree you need a gas for the heads to float above the platter, but what is special about helium? Helium is 1/7 the density of air, so couldn't you just fill the drive with air but reduce the internal pressure to 1/7 atmospheric pressure and achieve the same result?
"By expanding capacity of its top-of-the-range Enterprise Capacity 3.5-inch HDD to 10 TB (up 2 TB from 8 TB, or by 25%), Seagate increases capacity per rack to 2400 TB (up from 1920 TB), ... "
That doesn't seem right. That's only 240 disks in a 42U rack; not very dense at all. You can get 45 drive JBOD units from SuperMicro that take up only 4U, so you can easily stuff 8 of them into a rack, and have room for a 2U head unit with the storage controllers, UPSes, and even a 1U KVM slide-out. 8x45 = 360 disks * 10 TB is 3600 TB.
If you put power and KVM into a different rack (or use a PDU), you can get another JBOD into the rack, bringing the total up to 4050 TB.
And, if you stick the head unit into another rack, you can squeeze a 10th JBOD in (with 2U to spare) for a total of 4500 TB.
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baobrain - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I'm more concerned about running out of helium than I am with improving capacity.pedjache - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Running out of helium? You mean like, on a global level?CaedenV - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Ya, it's a real problem. Helium is artificially cheap and we are running out at an alarming rate. We throw tons of the stuff away every year in party baloons and other silly things when we need to save it for future use in medical equipment and HDDs.In 50 years we are really going to kick ourselves for our collective short-sightedness on such things.
SirMaster - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I feel like if it was really a problem then they wouldn't just sell loads of helium to anyone who walks into a party store.Shouldn't something that is actually at risk of running out be regulated and/or expensive?
Something just doesn't add up to me.
icrf - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
The US used to hoard it until about 20 years ago, then decided to liquidate their stockpile which artificially drove down prices.http://priceonomics.com/the-increasing-scarcity-of...
ingwe - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
My understanding is that the US is selling off their reserve and so the market price is artificially lowered. The problem with He is that it escapes the atmosphere so it is the one truly non-renewable resource.dullard - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
It is because there isn't a real helium shortage.The US had a strategic helium reserve that it is shutting down (Federal Helium Reserve) due to a law passed in 1996. In doing so, they are selling off their excess helium. In response, helium producers slashed production rather than face low prices. So, there was a temporary artificial helium shortage.
In the mean time, Qatar tripled production and the problem is starting to go away.
A5 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
The shortage isn't quite as dire as these guys are saying, but is an exhaustible resource on a long-term scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Occurrence_an...There about 40B m^3 of He in the world, and we use 180M m^3 per year. At the current rate of use, that gives us 222 years, assuming it is all exploitable, etc.
Guspaz - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Meh, Jupiter is roughly 10% helium, and Neptune is 19%. By the time we run out of helium here on earth, the cost of space access should be low enough to make mining that practical.Even if it's very expensive to mine, we won't ever run out of it (Jupiter is very big). It would just be stupid expensive and as such reserved for important things.
ddriver - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
By the time we run out of helium, we would long have ran out a number of cheap abundant resources, without which space travel will be considerably less affordable than it is today. Nations will be too invested in war over the last bits of clean water and fertile land to devote resources to space mining.Jupiter is very, very far, Neptune - ever further. Harvesting it in orbit of such massive planets will require massive and immensely durable and thus heavy spacecraft, which would be immensely more expensive to build, and exponentially more expensive than that to run.
It will cost trillions to just put a harvester/tanker in operation, and it will only deliver one load in a decade or so, and it is not clear how many loads it will deliver before it breaks.
Guspaz - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
You don't need to send the mining spacecraft back and forth, just cheap tugs with highly efficient electric propulsion (ion engines, very low thrust, insanely efficient). The length of the trip doesn't matter if you have a lot of them doing the route regularly, just like how the travel time of an oil pipeline doesn't matter if you have a constant rate of flow.Would it be very expensive, even with upcoming dramatic reductions in launch costs? Sure. At that point, helium would be reserved for important things due to the price.
ddriver - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
The Apollo program costed 200+ billion in 2015 dollars just to get several 4 ton containers to the moon. Launching durable high volume high pressure tanks sure won't be cheap. Using inflatable low pressure balloons is not applicable in the atmosphere of giant planets, although it will make landing on Earth very easy. There is the possibility to use heavy high pressure tanks to transport from atmosphere to high orbit and fill balloons there. But still, it will be too expensive, it will be cheaper to burn energy to force fusion just for the sake of producing helium than transporting it from Jupiter.The expected "reduction in launch costs", if it even manifests, will be under the form of higher profit margins for the companies performing the launches. The price drop for the consumer will be a tiny fraction of the savings in cost. I am high skeptical when it comes to reusing launch vehicles, seeing how they still often can't pull off one single launch.
Lord of the Bored - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
You can also harvest it from the moon. Where's my moonbase?WagonWheelsRX8 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Hopefully in 222 years we have figured out fusion, and can make Helium.ddriver - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Fusion will never work. It is a boondoggle for the world and a cash cow for a selected few. In stars fusion occurs easily due to high pressure which is "for free", here on Earth we don't have such density, so fusion reactions consume considerable amount of energy, that will always exceed the amount you can pull out of the fusion reaction. You can force it but you can't really milk it.vvume - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
I don't think fusion ignition is the problem. They have lasers to mimic the temperature/pressure of the stars. The problem is to sustain it without blowing out the reactor.Anato - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Ignorance is bliss. Helium problem is real but not imminent so no one cares. Regulate, hah, deregulate is the mantra. There is no long term free market. You need regulation to keep market from collapsing to singlularity =few mega corporations and no competition.FunBunny2 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
-- We throw tons of the stuff away every year in party baloons and other silly things when we need to save it for future use in medical equipment and HDDs.stop bellyaching!!! this is American capitalism: only the short term matters, and I'll screw anybody including my next generation, in order to make an extra buck today.
nandnandnand - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
nope, not a real problem at allhttps://archive.is/HVq1d
Helium HDDs use barely any helium anyway.
tygrus - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Helium is recycled. I would expect 100% of the helium in helium balloons would return to the atmosphere. The helium either: slowly escapes at ground level; is suddenly released at ground level by the cleaners et. al. bursting the balloons; or released into the higher atmosphere where the pressure is lower and the balloon expands and burst. Helium back into the atmosphere where a factory sucks it back in and extracts the Helium again.PVG - Friday, January 15, 2016 - link
Nop. Helium, like hydrogen, is light enough to escape the atmosphere into outer space. Without constant dumping on the atmosphere from other sources, eventually there would be none to be distilled.SirMaster - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Well good thing HDDs like this use such a tiny amount of helium compared to say party balloons.zodiacfml - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I guess you have read it too. Anyway, I do agree it needs to be conserved as it should be left for more important or expensive purpose such as super cooling. Don't worry though, I'm confident that SSDs will be the choice of enterprises for its higher density (soon), performance, and reliability in the near future.HakkaH - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
you should be way more concerned about fossil fuel than Helium. There is % wise an insane amount of helium more than there is any fossil fuel left even on the best estimates.The US helrium reserve had to be brought down (government rule) and infact the US supplies about 80% of the world helium us which just the US gathers. consider the amount then that is still left in the world. The way we are going right now we will probably destroy the polar ice caps faster than losing out on Helium.
nandnandnand - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
there is no helium shortagehttps://archive.is/HVq1d
eldakka - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Worst comes to worst helium can be manufactured.Ways that we could 'manufacture' helium now (with sufficient funds):
1) Alpha radiation is helium atoms. Therefore generating high alpha-radiation sources can be used to 'farm' helium.
2) As helium is the second lightest element, it can, literally, be made by fissioning any of the heavier 100 elements that exist (might require successive fissioning of heavier to lighter, then fissioning those lighter elements etc).
Potential ways to manufacture helium that might be viable within the next ~50 years or so:
1) Fusion of hydrogen into helium. This of course assumes we ever get working fusion!
Potential ways to obtain helium that might be viable in the next ~100 years or so:
1) mining from the gas giants, most likely Saturn. Saturn's magnetic field and gravity are much, much less than Jupiters, therefore it is a more viable mining target than Jupiter. And, while the same is true to an even greater extent for Uranus and Neptune, they are much, much further away than Saturn. Also, Saturn has a moon, Titan, in orbit that has atmospheric pressure not too much different from earth's, while having less gravity, which would make it a good location for a base of operations (assuming it's not 100% automated).
CaedenV - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Holy cats! 2.4PB of storage per rack!I was perfectly content with the 7 3TB drive in my home server... not I feel that I need more even though I don't have a use for it... *yet*
eldakka - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
mmmm, nice rack.3DoubleD - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I just thinking out loud here, but why do they fill the drive with He when they could just pump out the drive to a lower pressure? Both would reduce turbulance due to friction with the atmosphere. Perhaps building a case capable of widthstanding the pressure differential is much more expensive than a case that can remain hermetically sealed for the lifetime of the drive? Perhaps an atmosphere is needed for convection of heat? Again, just wondering out loud. If anyone knows the answer go ahead and jump in.Guspaz - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Hard drives don't work in a vacuum, the read/write head need a cushion of gas to keep the head from hitting the platter.3DoubleD - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Yes, that appears to be it. Here is a great diagram for how it works in case anyone else is interested: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011...extide - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Ah, yes, that makes sense. I was wondering this myself, initially.The Von Matrices - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I agree you need a gas for the heads to float above the platter, but what is special about helium? Helium is 1/7 the density of air, so couldn't you just fill the drive with air but reduce the internal pressure to 1/7 atmospheric pressure and achieve the same result?TheITS - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Density and pressure are not the same thing. For example, water density barely increases with depth however the pressure does.The Von Matrices - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Yes, but air is basically an ideal gas at room temperature, so density and pressure are directly related.ingwe - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I didn't realize this. Thanks for the information!okashira - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
When will someone test the inside of these?I guess I'm still convinced Hydrogen is a superior medium:
-Slower leak rate due to higher molecular size
-better thermal conductivity
-lower viscosity = less drag
It's why Hydrogen is used exclusively on large high end grid generators.
safety's a non issue... it's too small amount of H2
phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
"By expanding capacity of its top-of-the-range Enterprise Capacity 3.5-inch HDD to 10 TB (up 2 TB from 8 TB, or by 25%), Seagate increases capacity per rack to 2400 TB (up from 1920 TB), ... "That doesn't seem right. That's only 240 disks in a 42U rack; not very dense at all. You can get 45 drive JBOD units from SuperMicro that take up only 4U, so you can easily stuff 8 of them into a rack, and have room for a 2U head unit with the storage controllers, UPSes, and even a 1U KVM slide-out. 8x45 = 360 disks * 10 TB is 3600 TB.
If you put power and KVM into a different rack (or use a PDU), you can get another JBOD into the rack, bringing the total up to 4050 TB.
And, if you stick the head unit into another rack, you can squeeze a 10th JBOD in (with 2U to spare) for a total of 4500 TB.
2400 TB isn't that great in comparison.
nandnandnand - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I read X-bit labs without complaining, but there's no doubt Anton needs an extra grammar check on his Anandtech articles.Zak - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
After the 1TB Seagate fiasco I'm not touching a Seagate drive for while unless their reliability ratings improve significantly.