CompuServe Messages

Earth's Top Elements

    22-Sep-94 23:53:31
Fm: Bill Combs 73524,2651
To: Doug Mitchell 70621,702
>> Numbers I had earlier jotted down from the Encyclopedia Brittanica >> tell me for the continental crust. . . . Do you remember what section you found that in the Brittanica? I have an edition in my office and spent some time without success trying to find the data you quote. >> Titanium, for example, is common, but not used a lot because it >> costs a lot of energy and effort to bust it out of even its best >> ores. But given fusion power, dropping ordinary rock into a >> fusion torch and extracting even the toughest customers may become >> easy someday. Is fusion significant because electricity will be cheap (as in for electrolysis), or is it because fusion is so hot it decomposes everything? If that is the case, would not fusion power be the cure-all for *all* mineral extractions?