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."

Comments

Wonder and amazement

[SIGALRM]

From TFA[1]:

The prospect of either Helium 3 fueled fusion or space based solar power or a combination of both replacing fossil fuels should excite people who express concern for the Earth's environment

It's a big, dead rock in space, boys. I doubt that the ridiculous cost of space travel will ever fall enough to make it worthwhile, but in case that happens, the lunar environmentalists will be there to file EPA complaints against anyone trying to make the moon economically productive.

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?

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Rycross]

Everything is non-renewable given a long enough time frame. Entropy is a bitch.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[sdnick]

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.

There is no legitimate environmentalist standpoint worth discussing about the Moon. There is no life on the Moon. There is no environment for environmentalists to worry about. If they're worried about the faint possibility that human mining will somehow create some crater on the moon visible from the Earth, they can just pretend an asteroid made it, same as the millions of other craters littering the moon's surface. Or just perform the mining on the horribly scarred side of the Moon facing away from the Earth and dare anyone to claim that man's activities make it look worse.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[ultranova]

Everything is non-renewable given a long enough time frame. Entropy is a bitch.

Actually, wrong. In the long run, entropy is your friend. This is because the maximum amount of entropy any given volume of space can contain is determined by the size of said area (to be exact, it is determined by the surface area of the event horizon of a black hole filling said volume). As long as entropy is less than this amount, it keeps growing, driving all kinds of interesting systems - such as yourself - as it goes.

If the universe was static, entropy would eventually reach its maximum, leading to heat death of the universe and the cessation of all interesting events. But the universe is not static, it is expanding. Consequently, the maximum amount of entropy the universe as a whole can contain is also increasing. If the expansion goes on forever, so does the growth of entropy and all that it drives.

In other words, in an expanding universe there will always be useful energy sources, by the virtue of it expanding.

The moon doesn't have an "environment"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The moon doesn't have an "environment"

[cheebie]

Mass of the Moon: 7.3477×10^22 Kg according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon.

Number of humans currently on earth, massively rounded up: 10^10.

That means that every person on earth would need to use up
seven TRILLION Kg of material to exhaust the moon. Every single
person on earth could grab ten tons of moon-material and have no
appreciable effect on the Moon's mass or it's effect on the tides.

I'd vote for...

[camperdave]

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.

I would say his arguments are specious...

[Nova Express]

...except he didn't make any. His rhetoric boils down to "Environmentalism is good. Looking at the Earth from the Moon helped kickstart environmentalism. Therefore we shouldn't mine the moon." It's a non-sequitur on the order of the Chewbacca Defense. He expects that yelling "Environmentalism!" will cause enough knees to jerk to sway opinion without actually making any arguments. (The sad thing is he may be right, given as how many people treat environmentalism as the new religion. )

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"?

Short-sighted world rapers

[Cajun Hell]

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.

Flawed Philosophy

[Toonol]

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.

What environment?

[SKorvus]

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.