r/interestingasfuck 2d ago

/r/all A Chinese earthquake rescue team deployed drones to light up the night and aid search and rescue operations after the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar.

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u/ninetynyne 2d ago

Balloons are harder to deal with and clumsy. Repositioning could be a pain.

Actually, I think a small balloon attached to a drone (kind of like a tiny zeppelin) might be the best of both worlds.

But helium is actually quite a valuable resource, and the next best thing, hydrogen, is far too flammable.

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u/apathy-sofa 2d ago

Helium is quite valuable? The grocery store up the street from my home fills helium balloons for 99 cents each.

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u/ninetynyne 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes, actually, it is. In fact, there is preparation for a global shortage. Balloons are a giant waste of helium, and in fact, a large amount is required for usage in research and medical applications, such as MRIs.

It is produced as a byproduct of natural gas production, however, but that also means that needs to ramp up as well.

It's more like helium is being used frivolously for things like balloons because it's currently very cheap but that may stop due to needing it for more important applications first.

There's also the fun fact that, as far as I understand, once helium is released into the atmosphere, it is incredibly difficult and economically unviable to recapture, hence why once it's used, it's essentially gone permanently, as far as we're concerned.

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u/apathy-sofa 2d ago

TIL, thanks

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u/Ryhsuo 2d ago edited 2d ago

It’s actually quite a complicated subject. The answer is yes, sort of.

Helium’s most important use is supercooling. Think, MRIs, quantum computers, semiconductor fabricators. It doesn’t really have a substitute as a refrigerant so it’s a critical material for securing a technological future. With the accelerated advance of AI requiring more chips and fabs, this is quickly becoming a reality. Since 2021, helium prices have doubled.

Currently, the only good supply of Helium is a byproduct of natural gas. Only 3 countries supply most of the world’s demands, US, Qatar and Algeria. Because sources are so few, any war or trade disruptions can be highly damaging to tech industries that rely on it. In the long term, we will also run out of helium as it is a finite resource in the earth’s crust, with the only feasible option to generate more being a byproduct of fusion. This makes it unlike other gases such as Hydrogen and Nitrogen, which we can simply pull from the air or water and chemically seperate.

As for why Helium balloons are 99c, Helium currently costs around $15 a cubic meter, and it takes ~30-40 standard party size balloons to fill a cubic meter. It feels cheap because you’re buying Helium in its gas form, whereas industrial applications use Helium in its liquid form which is magnitudes of quantity greater.

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u/FlimsyMo 2d ago

Y’all think they gonna send up 50 pounds of helium? wtf is this comment chain?

Light balloons are 100 years old, drones just make it complicated

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u/Profezzor-Darke 2d ago

Natural Helium is absolutely limited, and we need that stuff to defrost plane wings in between flights and other things

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u/NiceAxeCollection 1d ago

It was free when I was a kid.

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u/heart-aroni 2d ago edited 2d ago

Mini zeppelin sounds like a great idea!

I found these examples on YouTube

https://youtu.be/r8pXYhPDzBI?si=Fi7lCmpHcf-BxcNE

https://youtu.be/DHvhF4traPY?si=dyyoB6OUVuARoag7

And I remembered these things exist, inflatable rc dolphins

https://youtu.be/X0bdVWEmN64?si=yAlnbBScGHIyrMSg