The Prospects For Lunar Mining

MarkWhittington writes "With the discovery of vast amounts of water on the Moon, some frozen in the shadows of craters at the Lunar poles and some chemically bonded with the regolith, interest in lunar mining has arisen among commercial space entrepreneurs. Paul Spudis, a lunar geologist, has suggested a plan to return to the Moon, which features, among other things, robotic resource extraction and the deployment of space-based fuel depots using lunar water even before the first human explorers return to the lunar surface. But Mike Wall, writing in Space.com, suggests that there are a number of legal as well as technical issues involved in setting up lunar mining operations."

Comments

Energy requirements?

[bigsexyjoe]

I'm surprised the most obvious challenge in going to the moon isn't mentioned in the article: that it takes a huge amount of energy to get to the moon and then to get back. I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water? Energy production uses a huge amount of water. Going to the moon for some water is counter productive.

It is a far more efficient use of energy to mine the mineral out of garbage dumps than try to try to ship it from the moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Jeremi]

it takes a huge amount of energy to get to the moon and then to get back

You don't have to send much material to the moon: "just" some mining and processing robots. The real trick will be getting the resulting large quantities of rocket fuel from the moon to where it would be useful (i.e. other Earth orbits). The moon's gravity well is much shallower than Earth's, but I'm not sure if it's shallow enough to make such a venture profitable.

I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water? Energy production uses a huge amount of water.

Rocket fuel, apparently. But to get rocket fuel (read: hydrogen and oxygen) you have to split the mined moon-water, which means you'll need some energy source to do the splitting. Where will that energy come from? Vast solar panel arrays? Nuclear? Geothermal? (does the moon have any geothermal energy to be tapped?)

A Harsh Mistress

[Nethead]

I can't think of one story about mining on the moon that didn't result in a lunar revolt. I'd say the last thing they have to worry about is who owns the resources. It's the staff/residents you have to watch out for.