Project Icarus: The Gas Mines of Uranus Guest contributor (Discovery News) Adam Crowl looks at the fuel required for an interstellar trip and finds a gas giant with huge mining potential. ...However, there is a surprising amount of helium-3 in the gas giant planets of the outer solar system, and in the original 1978 "Project Daedalus" report Bob Parkinson suggested mining it via floating robotic factories in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Since then a different planet has moved to the forefront of gas-mining plans because it lacks Jupiter's intense gravity, Saturn's gigantic rings of orbital debris and is closer than distant Neptune. Man’s footprint stretches deep into the forests, into the water’s depths, into the mountains, into the ground and now into outer space! Haven't my hands bled the eartH sufficiently that I need mine elsewhere for the spark? Hasn’t my rage scratched its final surface with the pale use of my wits and paws? The forests and oceans and
(The Weaver's Song)