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The Economic Development of the Moon
MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium 3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. An examination of the issue makes one wonder why."
If you looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, would you be filled with a sense of wonder and pride about the ingenuity and courage of your fellow man, or with forbidding and dread that the moon was being raped?
Sigs cause cancer.
I think neglecting the potential for cheese mining is the real crime here.
As I think of it. I think most people think of clean air and water and an ecosystem as an environment. Not a bunch of dead dust in a vacuum.
It seems that many in the "environmental" movement just want nothing to change from its "natural" state, even where there is no nature.
If you looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, would you be filled with a sense of wonder and pride about the ingenuity and courage of your fellow man, or with forbidding and dread that the moon was being raped?
Given our current level of technology, if I looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, I would be filled with a sense of wonder about the ingenuity of aliens, and with forbidding and dread that the Earth would be next.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
If we mine the moon, then we'll become dependent on its resources. When it finally explodes (as moons are notorious for doing), our glorious space empire will fall.
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
Are we to avoid mining the moon because it will harm the native lifeforms? Oh yeah, there aren't any.
Do we need to invent the word "rock-hugger"?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If you let the helium out, it will stop floating up in the sky. Guess where it will fall.
Screw volcanoes; some people say the dinosaurs died because they had no space program. Maybe they died because they did have one, and made the same type of arrogant mistake.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This is a very harmful idea. A certain amount of environmentalism makes sense; disrupting ecosystems can have harmful repercussions, as can running out of non-renewable resources, etc.
But this idea of preserving the lunar environment seems to me to be based on the idea that objects are better left untouched by humanity. That things should be left untouched, even when it is detrimental to humanity, and no worse than neutral to our ecosystem. This is the type of nonsense that, in the extreme, calls for humanity to let itself go extinct, so as to stop our plundering of the Earth.
Nothing in nature is a value, without something living that gives it that worth.
Seriously - if it was an argument about contributing to space junk (which can be a hazard to life and limb), or an argument about leaving nascent life (like, say, on Europa or Titan) alone to develop, play... I can grok those arguments.
But the ones presented? ...it's the friggin' Moon! There ain't jack shit for life or biomass there! The only non-commercial value it currently has offhand are the Apollo landing sites (for historical value), and that's it!
IMHO, tear that bastard up if it generates commerce, gives us extra space to live, acts as an astronomical platform, and more importantly, if it takes humankind that much closer to becoming a space-faring race. It's not like we'll reduce its mass enough to really worry about instability (at least not within the next billion years or so), and it's (IMHO) free and open for the taking - belonging (nor should it ever belong) to no earth-bound nation.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I am an very environmentally-conscious person: walking, biking or transit, no car. Vegan. Local, preferably organic produce. Buy used goods where-ever possible, make do or repair rather than buying. I give that as background, so that it's clear I'm not a typical consumer that thinks my personal desires outweigh impact to the environment.
That that said, I must ask: what environment? The moon is a lifeless, barren hunk of rock. All that has ever occurred in its history, is being pummeled by countless meteors to create a scarred and pulverized surface. There is no environment to protect, only dust and rocks. And as pristine and spartan beauty that may be, there's simply no one to admire it.
Right now, the universe appears devoid of life, except on our tiny blue rock, and it's always in danger of being snuffed out by one stray asteroid. Getting humanity up into space is the best thing we can do, for us, and for the Earth. Where we go, we will bring life with us. We will create new environments on any planets we settle. We are the seed by which Earth's life can spread throughout the galaxy.
Seeing lights glittering back at us from human settlements during a new moon shouldn't be viewed as a desecration of something worth saving, but the growth of new life where there was none before.
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
In order to get to the point that we could make an entire solar system a boondoggle, we'll have to get out of ours first. That means tapping energy and resources available in the solar system, whether the process is pretty or not.
It's all getting destroyed by the sun in a few billion years, anyway.
I don't think environmentalism is the important issue here. I'm more interested in what impact the economic development of the moon will have on international relations.
Whose moon is it? Of course we have treaties, but when a company starts mining up there, you can bet the profits aren't going to be distributed very widely. Besides the ethical implications of this, how are other states going to react to an American or Chinese company mining a resource that used to be considered off-limits and belonging to all, until it was convenient for that to no longer be the case? Is this just a case of first come, first serve capitalism? There are more things at stake here than just environmentalism.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Not to mention that you are free labor, and food to boot.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
There are people who would consider that not just raping the Moon Goddess, but anally raping the Moon Goddess.
(P.S.: In before rule 34!)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
A lot of us are anxious to see some major commercial application of space (see the recent discussion on space-based solar power, too), but I'm afraid helium-3 mining on the moon is not a feasible one.
First of all, Helium-3 already exists in smaller amounts on earth. It makes up about 0.00138% of the helium on the earth, as opposed to 0.00138% of helium on the moon. More importantly, it can also be synthesized by deuterium fusion or by tritium decay, although current production is only a few kilograms per year. However, one of the first generation fusion fuels is deuterium, so it's very likely that first generation technology could eventually be used to make fuel for second generation fusion plants.
Second, obviously, we have not achieved practical hydrogen fusion yet, much less helium fusion, which is harder. The current ITER timeline estimates the first commercial hydrogen fusion plants will come online around 2040-2050. Helium fusion, if we decide it's worth the effort to develop, will come later.
Third, you have to move a lot of dirt to get a useful amount of He-3. Estimates are the US alone would need at least 15-20 tons per year for our current electrical generation. At the quoted 0.01 ppm on the moon, that means you need to process 2 billion tons (approx 670 million cubic meters) of regolith every year. In comparison, the giant Three Gorges Dam in China required excavating only 134 million cubic meters of material over a period of 10 years, using thousands of workers and who knows how many tons of heavy equipment.
Additionally, processing the regolith for the helium requires first boiling out all of the gasses by heating the excavated dirt several hundred degrees, then separating the minute fraction of He-3 from all the "waste" gasses. It will be very energy intensive. By my very rough math, every cubic meter of moon you excavate requires on order of 100 kW-hours of heat, so a year's worth of digging would take 47 billion kW-hours. This is about 4% of our current electrical usage, which hints at the scale of the power production facilities that would have to be built on the moon to facilitate this mining...over 5,000 MW of capacity not counting digging and gas segregation energy needs.
Yeah, but this isn't just any rock. It's the most significant rock in human history, from ancient times to now.
Here is a precedent. There is absolutely no question that Uluru deserves protection. It's protected by a World Heritage Order, which puts it in the global crown jewels. What is it? It's a bloody big rock, just like the moon.
- Vast energy and material resources that will allow untold bazillions of years of human lifespan.
- Vast energy and material resources that will allow the flourishing ecosystems that Man will bring with him, totalling even more untold bazillions of years of life. (If we truly colonize the Moon, only the first generation or two will live in the sterile settlements we all imagine.)
- Vast energy and material resources which will allow untold bazillions of years of life for new life forms, those adapted to the lunar environments and those partially or entirely created by Man.
- An insurance policy for intelligent life as we know it (not just Man, you know, not for much longer) against an unfortunate accident on the Earth.
- A launching base for further exploration and the spreading of yet more life, wonderful, vibrant, diverse life across the universe.
Against this, you argue- Somebody, someday, might want to see the original moon.
How unbelievably fucking selfish to deny the universe life so that you can see a pretty rock. Get a poster or something already. If you try, you might be able to get one with a unicorn on it too; bonus!Environmentalists ought to be leading the charge for space colonization. Forget saving ecosystems that do pretty well without your help... what about the ecosystems that don't even exist yet? Biodiversity? You ain't seen nothing yet. If you love life, don't stand in front of it.
the implication that environmentalists are just crazy Ludites is crazy in itself
Most aren't. But unfortunately the few that are have a lot of influence. Look at the utterly irrational fear of nuclear power they've created, when by any environmental standard it's tremendously better than fossil fuels. For them, the real problem is not environmental damage but our decadent materialist lifestyles, and anything that allows us to continue on that path must be opposed.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
The "Helium 3 on the moon" people have it backwards. As someone else pointed out, you have to mine a lot of dirt to get any useful amount of the stuff. On the other hand, deuterium is available at moderate prices. Heavy water costs about $300/Kg. If we ever get fusion to work as a power source (a big if, after half a century of failure), deuterium fusion will work first.
There's some grumbling about deuterium fusion producing radioactive waste products, but it's nowhere near as messy as fission. You get some tritium (which is a useful material; among other things, it decays into ... Helium-3!) and the reactor components may become radioactive, but the isotopes are relatively short-lived; decades, not millennia, of decay time are required. The concrete and steel has already cooled off for many older decommissioned reactors.
Helium-3 fusion is potentially cleaner, though. If we ever get fusion to work, it's the fuel of choice for getting off the earth with fusion power, because you could dump the reaction products into the atmosphere without causing fallout.
So forget about mining the moon to power Earth. Dumb idea. Think about mining helium on Earth to power launch vehicles.