Top Unknown Sci-Fi Movies for 2009 - And Helium-3 Fusion!

A friend of mine pointed out this post about the top nine unknown sci-fi films to look out for in 2009. Some of them look pretty interesting. I like finding smaller films like this - while many suck, a smaller film also has a better chance of actually being done intelligently for lack of studio suit interference.

One film in particular, Luna, caught my eye because it centers around mining Helium-3 on the moon. That is just so cool that they have that, because that is actually a material that would be mineable on the moon and could potentially revolutionize power production. For you see, the ultimate fuel for fusion power would be Helium-3. The only problem is, it is basically not found on Earth. There's probably enough to experiment with, but that's about it.

But the Moon, sitting out there with no atmosphere, has been collecting Helium-3 from the solar wind since the moon was formed. The regolith (the moon's surface crust) is loaded with it. It isn't that hard to mine. You just collect up the dust, heat it up a bit to loosen the Helium, and collect it. I read that mining the surface of the moon this way would yield enough Helium-3 to provide fusion power for the entire planet Earth for over a century. Of course, then we'd be out of luck, except for the huge balls of helium we have called Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Uranus might be the best candidate. Send a ship out there to sift out some Helium-3 from Uranus's atmosphere, then fly it back. You could collect enough Helium-3 that way to make the whole venture massively profitable - probably getting back 100 times in value in power the actual cost of the mission.

So anyway, I digress greatly, but I just thought that was really cool that someone was using that as a premise in a sci-fi movie.

The Bruce Willis movie also sounds interesting.

And finally, The Box. That movie is based on a premise I've seen done before. I wonder what they'll do differently with it. Minor Spoiler: (Don't read further unless you want to be spoiled) - In the version I saw, the guy pushes the button and gets the money. This then kills someone else, but it is someone the button-presser doesn't even know. Then the box person comes back to collect the box. And of course, he tells him that he will now give the box to someone else. Someone the button-presser doesn't even know. Sinister end music. Kind of an interesting mini-morality play.