Another Air-Headed Post by Jeremy

If we just figure out that whole Cold Fusion thing, the helium shortage will take care of itself

But then there will enough helium to keep clowns in business.  Nobody wants that.

Not everybody is afraid of clowns, you know.  

True, but nobody actually likes them.  

So anyway...I work in the technology field as an engineer.  One of the things I'm asked to do on an all-too-frequent basis is to "Think Outside The Box."  It's a cliche I'm certain you've heard before.  Being creative like I am, I often go a little too far outside the box for most people's tastes, but I'm okay with that.  

One of the areas of technology that I deal with is helium.  It's a gas that is far more useful than making balloons float and your voice sound funny, and most people don't realize that.  It's very often used as an inert cooling gas used to regulate the temperature of highly sensitive areas of equipment, such as electrostatic chucks and powerful magnets.  As such, the technology company that I work for uses quite a bit of helium.  

At this point, it's important to note that the world's supply of helium has officially reached "shortage" levels, and the government has even tapped into its strategic reserve of the gas.  Everybody who uses large amounts of helium is aware of this and working feverishly to reduce their usage.  All of this said, as of right now, there is no way to artificially create helium...all of the supply we get comes from natural gas wells.  One other remarkably abundant source of helium is the Sun (since stars exist due to hydrogen fusing into helium), but there are fairly obvious and significant problems with obtaining it.  Alas, our supply given current technology is finite.  A better solution is required!  

Another problem always facing the world is the supply of energy.  Fossil fuels, wind, solar power, hydrogen fuel cells, nuclear power...all of this stuff has its pluses and minuses, and probably won't be able to power the world forever.  While the supply of these energies is asymptotic, and not quite infinite (The sun will keep going for a couple billion more years, after all), our need for sources of power is growing constantly.  A better solution is required!  

Two problems with one inescapable and elegant solution.  Cold Fusion!  All we need to do is get cracking on turning this whole Cold Fusion thing into reality...start fusing our own hydrogen into helium, extract bundles of energy from the reaction, and have some extra helium laying around (Okay, floating around) as a bonus!  Win-Win-Win!  

Get on it, Science!