> One session of xenon gas costs $5,000 per person for a 30-minute session.
From another link in the comments: https://tripsitter.substack.com/p/xenon
> Because of its scarcity, xenon is much more expensive than the lighter noble gases—approximate prices for the purchase of small quantities in Europe in 1999 were 10 €/L (=~€1.7/g) for xenon, 1 €/L (=~€0.27/g) for krypton, and 0.20 €/L (=~€0.22/g) for neon,
That price of argon might be per cubic meter, not per liter.
The price of argon is essentially zero for the argon itself, which forms one percent of the air. What you pay is only the energy required to separate it from dioxygen and dinitrogen, e.g. by liquefaction and distillation.
EDIT: Googling now, I see prices for argon around half of dollar per kilogram.
A cubic meter of argon has slightly less than 1.8 kg, so the price of argon is at most 1 $ per cubic meter.
A liter is one thousand times less than a cubic meter, so the price per liter is one tenth of a cent.
The gas itself is under $100 per liter depending on purity.
Not really. The range of prices doesn't change by multiple orders of magnitude. At small quantities the cost of the ancillary equipment might be as much as the gas. I guarantee you they're not buying $5000 of pristine gas per client.
One of the hardest parts of dealing with Xenon is getting the last little bits of Krypton gas out. Very small doses of Krypton gas are inert and not really a health issue. The research grade Xenon has to be higher purity because many experiments rely on it being the only gas present.
> No one is going to go up Everest with anything below medical.
Companies who do Everest expeditions vary greatly. There's a lot of history of bad behavior among companies around Everest. Just because it's expensive and their clientele is wealthy, you shouldn't assume they're operating according to the highest standards. There's a long history of badly behaving companies around Everest.
One reason why it’s not a good idea to use a normal air compressor to breath from (or compress air for cylinders), is precisely because of issues like this.
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/december/p...
Generally and as an illustration, a chemical may have a 99% "reagent" grade that includes industrial solvents or some other chemicals that are toxic to ingest. So its equivalent "food" grade may have the same 99% purity but the other 1% is something that isn't poisonous.
With the 99% stuff, the laws of physics compells them to use the benzene.
Financial considerations also exert an influence on the process.
Where I am it's called "methylated spirits" and IIRC the boing point of the additive is very close to that of the alcohol so it's not possible to distill it out.
Hopefully the only country with a market for that.
At what temperature and pressure?
(1) For example, a mixture of xenon and fluorine, when exposed to sunlight, makes crystals of xenon difluoride.
Pun intended?
See the Meyer-Overton correlation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...
While on this topic, one book I really enjoyed is Into Thin Air [1]
I'm chill with a bit of traffic on popular trails, but that also kill the vibe I'd imagine. Hope it was still fun though.
That's an understatement.
It's trendy to downplay climbing Everest now that it's associated with rich people, but it's still an incredibly difficult feat. There isn't any comparison to a day hike in the cascades.
I have several friends who I consider very athletic and trained. Even they had difficulty with smaller, less challenging peaks. You can't climb Everest without a lot of training, motivation, and dedication, even if you have all the money in the world to spend on it.
Rich people are weird.
The mountain has been flooded with rich people paying guides to get them to the top for decades. It’s obviously still a major challenge, but very much a well-monetized one.
There are a lot of delusional people who wish they could pay their way to the top, but they get filtered out by the realities of how hard it is to climb at altitude before they can even get to the point of making an attempt.
It's definitely easier to make a climb today than it was decades ago, but it's not something the average person can pull off. You have to be very fit and motivated to do it even with the aids.
That may be considered ridiculously expensive, noble, absurd, and or a small fortune to some, but to others it's relatively irrelevant, on the order of supersizing your fast food order.