Russia to Mine on the Moon by 2020

sxmjmae writes to tell us News.com is reporting that Russia has unveiled plans to establish a permanent mining operation on the moon by 2020 in order to extract the rare isotope Helium-3. From the article: "Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope of helium that can be used in nuclear fusion. Rare on earth but plentiful on the moon, it is seen by some experts as an ideal fuel because it is powerful, non-polluting and generates almost no radioactive by-product."

Comments

How much mining? Orbital vectors etc....

[Tragek]

How much mass would have to be removed from the moon (percentage wise) before there would be a noticable effect on the orbit of the moon, or the tides. Which would come first?

Re:How much mining? Orbital vectors etc....

[Jerf]

The mass of the Moon is ~7,349,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms.

To cart away even one millionth of one percent of the moon would require staggering amounts of energy. By the time we're dealing with that kind of energy, if we ever can (which I have my doubts about, at least in any way that would be useful for this task), I think we will be able to deal with the consequences.

Are you worried about whether if we do too much mining, we'll run out of crust on the Earth? Worrying about the Moon's mass is even sillier, since while there may be less moon, you're talking about actually removing the mass, something Earth mines don't have to do.

You'd also be talking about cosmic levels of heat here, because said "staggering amounts of energy" can't just disappear. Assuming you're talking about moving bits of the Moon to Earth (and not just flinging it uselessly into space) since the Earth is lower in a gravity well, all the mass will pick up the difference in gravitational potential between the Earth and the Moon, 100% in heat (since it won't move on the surface of the Earth, at least not for long). If you moved any cosmically significant amount of the Moon to the Earth, you'd make the surface of the Earth incandescent. (The exact temperature would vary depending on how much mass you're talking, but if you want to have some fun, take the gravitational potential difference of 1% of the mass of the moon, compute how much energy that is, then see how much heat that would add. It's a Big Number.) Until such time as Mankind is so powerful as to be able to revoke the laws of conservation of energy, at which point you can't predict effects anyhow, no significant amount of the Moon is going to get to Earth, at least not with a biosphere on Earth left to care.

Re:Maybe...

[Alex P Keaton in da]

I respectfully disagree- I think if the world's governments all got together to find a renewable clean energy source, they could do it quicker. It would certainly lead to more peace on Earth, with China and India clammoring for Oil... (What was that Val Kilmer movie with the cold fusion where he wore the masks, and they gave the technology to the world for free?)
It sucks that we spend so much effort, blood, money etc on fossil fuels. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but if we could solve the energy problem, we could devote so much more time to science and discovery...