Birdnow's Aviary

March 30, 2026

Helium Cut Off by Strait Closure

Timothy Birdnow

This is why it's more important than ever to go back to the Moon. There is helium on the lunar surface we can mine and ship back to Earth.

Helium Shortage Has Started Impacting Tech Supply Chains, Execs Say

Just a little refresher; one of the things that hurt Nazi Germany in the leadup to the Second World War was they lacked helium while the U.S. had plenty. The allies remembered how the German Empire used airships to attack Britain (one of the less known aspects of WWI, the Zeppelins did a great deal of damage to Britain back then) and so boycotted German purchases of helium, forcing Germany to use the very flammable hydrogen in their airships. The result was that the Hindenberg - crown jewel of the Nazi's proud commercial airship industry - burst into flames upon touching down in New Jersey (teach them to visit there!) and that pretty much finished the use of airships for commercial flight. And using hydrogen for military craft presented an even great challenge, so Germany was forced out of the airship business.

The U.S. didn't do rigid airships but the military used blimps to seek out U-boats and do other things that airplanes just couldn't do. But there was a series of crashes that led to the lighter-than-air vehicles demise.

The point is that our having helium and Germany not having any may well have been the thing that turned the tide of the war.

Currently 90% of our imported helium comes from Qatar, with the rest coming from Russia

Granted, the U.S. is the world's largest helium producer and we produce most of what we need for ourselves, but that number has been dropping in recent years as helium is extracted from natural gas wells and those are being tapped out (I don't believe you get helium from fracking.) So we eventually want to control helium production, and to do that we need to have an infrastructure in place to tape Lunar helium before the Chinese get to it. ..

Did I mention that as of this year helium III trades for $2,500 per liter? And did I mention that a big slingshot could simply chuck the valuable stuff off the Moon and out of orbit, to be soft-landed on Earth? It's' expensive to get to the Moon, but it's dirt cheap to come back from there is you have the infrastructure. A mass driver powered by solar energy could fling the stuff back at the Earth like a monkey flinging his own poop.

At any rate this article worries about the loss of helium on the world market, but we can always ramp up our own production to cover it until then. Another Trump win; we get to charge more for something that we produce domestically.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Those countries depending on Russian gasoline and diesel will also be looking for a new supplier. The hits from the Ukrainian drones have forced Russia to suspend shipment of these 2 products due to the shortage it will create in Russia from April1 to October1. Ukraine was able to make 2 more drone strikes on the Usta-Luga facility the smoke from these strikes has reached St. Petersburg and Leningrad. The official Russian line is the smoke isnt smoke but a condition caused by atmospheric conditions. This is the type propaganda the people at the no kings rallies want.

Posted by: Mike at March 30, 2026 11:02 PM (J4sZI)

2 Actually, Tim, the U.S. tried rigid airships, with terrible luck. The Akron and the Macon both were lost in crashes at sea with all hands. As Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 30, 2026 11:55 PM (gVePp)

3 You're right Mike; this is killing Russian oil and gas. And that is pretty much the whole Russian economy. This war is strangling the Russians and Chinese both.
I'm not surprise t he Putin regime would say something ridiculous like that.
I know Dana; I didn't mean to say we didn't ever do rigid airships, just that we stopped doing them early on and went with blimps instead, which handled the wind better.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 31, 2026 02:51 AM (oflqW)

4 BTW, the Brits also tried rigid airships and had equally disastrous results.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 31, 2026 09:45 PM (k9h1C)

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