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Thorium is available in-situ.

He3 costs $40,000 per Troy ounce, its useful in Fusion research and Medical imaging technology.

http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Helium

If I can boost some mining equipment to the Moon, and use one of those solar powered tugs to get my ore back to the LEO and drop it in the Ocean somewhere, eventually there would be a payoff.

And yes when you can throw something the size of the ISS up there in 3 launches, the long awaited microgravity manufacturing and some interesting vapor deposition electronics stuff with smaller whiskers and imperfections than you get on Earth are possible.

Maybe like the fly eyeballs nano solar cell story from last week, you only need the perfect space crap to build the molds, then make millions of widgets down on Earth where materials and labor costs are conventional.

Get the lift costs cheap enough and people will fill Bigelow Aerospace's hotels.

A really neat feature of regolith is that you can melt it with microwaves to make structures. http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Sintered_regolith

The difference between "vast" and "trace" amount is really all about how valuable the stuff is, now isn't it? And He3 is about $1500 per gram, which is over 120 times that of gold.

Why is it so expensive now? Hint: it's not because everyone is clamouring to burn the stuff in their Mr. Fusions...

The difference between "vast" and "trace" amount is really all about how valuable the stuff is, now isn't it? And He3 is about $1500 per gram, which is over 120 times that of gold.

Based on this : http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Electrical_Conductors it would appear that neither of us are right (or the article is wrong). It states that Copper is both a better conductor in general, and a better conductor per unit of weight, than Sodium. Given the need for the special environmental needs of sodium, I can't see sodium being cheaper when construction/environment/maintenance costs are factored in.

Why, then do they use it? (For the record, my internship director, the one who told me the conductivity story, apparently also doesn't know.)

>the conditions there are harsh like an ET environment (no air, pressure challenges)

I just replied to someone else pondering this claim.

I believe they are harsher. The only problem is the distance to the moon for instance and maybe lack of resources like water.

The pressure difference from earth to space is one athmosphere, down at 10m into the ocean it is already two athmospheres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater

The temperature on the moon if you are under ground can be around 20degrees C at the equator while in the ocean it is around 0 to 2 degrees C
at higher depths.

http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Lunar_Temperature

Under water you have no to little access to solar energy, whereas you can get 10x to 3x of what you get at sealevel, on the moon.

In seawater you have also chemical stresses on equipment besides the mechanical stress. I could imagine that you will spend less on maintenance on the moon than you will on earth.

If you plan on staying longer in either location
you might be able to spread out the setup cost especially if you become self sufficient. All the maintenance will eat into whatever budget you have then.

I want to see somebodies plan of how to move to the sea from zero to whatever depth start a colony and become self sufficient over 100 years and be able to start a new colony like the first without help from the land.

Just looking at how nature itself is faring:

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/N/NetProductivity.html

kilocalories/m2/year
Ocean close to shore 2,500
Open ocean 800 ...
Tall-grass prairie 2,000
Desert 500
Lawn, Washington, D.C. 6,800
Sugar cane, Hawaii 25,000

Not bad but not great.

So what is more difficult protecting against zero pressure or protecting against the pressure under water:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater

Here is another good one:

"At depths greater than a few hundred meters, the sun has little effect on water temperature, because the sun's energy has been absorbed by water at the surface. In the great depths of the ocean the water temperature is very cold. In fact, 75% of the water in the world ocean (the great depths) has a temperature between 0 ÂC and 2 ÂC."

The shelf is what is left to you, a bit meagre I would say.

And there is more:

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/N/NetProductivity.html

so you are looking at:
"Estimated Net Productivity of Certain Ecosystems (in kilocalories/m2/year)"

Ocean close to shore 2,500
Open ocean 800 ...
Lawn, Washington, D.C. 6,800

Now compare this to the moons surface:

Surface temperature

"During the lunar day, the surface temperature averages 107ÂC, and during the lunar night, it averages -153ÂC."

At least it does get warm sometime and has negligible convection loss.

And it gets better:

http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Lunar_Temperature

"so at the equator T is about 296 K, or a comfortable 23 degrees C if you bury yourself sufficiently. At 60 degrees that drops to 249 K or -24 degrees C. The average subsurface temperature near the poles (85 degrees and higher) would be below 160 K or -110 degrees C."

Also compare the solar constant of 1366 W/m^2 to the 300-100 W/m^2 we are getting here on earth.

I might even venture a guess and predict that not only will you get a better power output of any solar power collection technology but also longer lifetime because the elements are just missing. As an example check out the ATS-3 satellite that has been working for ~30 years and compare to the 10 years you might get a warranty for on earth.

Personally I could imagine that the stresses on material on the moon especially underground could be manageable whereas you would have to deal with multiple atmospheres under water constantly. Also you would have to deal with corrosive sea water.

So you might cover the ocean with artificial islands maybe, but I doubt this will give you the bang for the buck, so far only oil drilling rigs get there. Granted getting the bang on the moon may require some searching for it.

Somehow I think the Dutch have found the best way to deal with the ocean.

The ecosystem on the moon unfortunately is missing, so I can offer no comparison there. But people will try to provide you with that information too:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/28/0238200

So finally to go to the ocean you have to take infrastructure with you and for a start you will find it difficult to support the same number of people than you can on land. Also you have to find a way to become somewhat independent from the land lubbers. You may find all mineral resources but the amount of energy available to you is similar to people on land and you have to expend more for maintenance and you also have to produce drinking water.

On the moon you have higher initial costs but over the eons they may become negligible. You have 3-10x more energy available per area covered. This will also reduce the amount of material you have to put into energy collecting technology. You may have similar maintenance but not all needed resources assuming that water may be hard to come by. You will have to do some travelling which may be easier if earth is not your destination.

For simplicity's sake I assumed that living is the goal not short term gains.