Professor Richardson believes the price for helium should rise by between 20- and 50-fold to make recycling more worthwhile. Nasa, for instance, makes no attempt to recycle the helium used to clean is rocket fuel tanks, one of the single biggest uses of the gas.

Professor Richardson also believes that party balloons filled with helium are too cheap, and they should really cost about $100 (£75) to reflect the precious nature of the gas they contain.

So the world is running out of helium, mainly due to U.S. privatization idiocracy, according to this article. Richardson asserts something I didn’t know, that we can’t make new helium; I figured there was some sort of lab method, but I’m guessing that doesn’t scale.

The next question: how many of our helium applications require helium, and how many use helium because it’s cheap? I can picture kids’ balloons being filled with hydrogen and a salting of other components that reduces flammability.