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Running Short on Fuel, Europeans Turn to Smoke-Detector Tech for Deep-Space Power

Posted July 15, 2010 1:19 PM

From Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now:

As rare-earth metals become less common, and as nuclear non-proliferation treaties proliferate, it may get harder to send probes into deep space. Preparing for that eventuality, the European Space Agency is stockpiling smoke-detector parts for a possible new fuel source.

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Re: Running Short on Fuel, Europeans Turn to Smoke-Detector Tech for Deep-Space Power

07/15/2010 4:52 PM

I don't know about all smoke detectors, but the ones I used to sell have about 0.3 µg of 241Am in each detector unit. I wonder how many they are stockpiling?

[edit] Returning to the blog, I see someone there calculates it at 214.3 billion smoke detector units. Wow! 6.8 billion people in the world... hmmm.

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