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

Save on supervisory staff

[WormholeFiend]

by using clones!

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[redemtionboy]

I'm guessing no one else is getting this judging by the lack of responses and points. Awesome movie.

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[Tumbleweed]

by using clones!

No, clones are people two!

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[guybrush3pwood]

Great movie

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[INeededALogin]

That is why we have Kevin Spacey!

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[mvar]

Yeap, great movie!

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[the_other_chewey]

JFTR, the movie in question is Moon.

Re:Save on supervisory staff

[Xamindar]

If anyone doesn't get it. Watch the movie "Moon". Great movie.

Regolith?

[HtR]

Regolith? Is that something like the monolith they found buried there about 10 years ago?

Re:Regolith?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regolith is the loose rock and dust that covers most of the moon's surface

There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon, but I suspect companies such as Weyland-Yutani may find it a worth while exercise for research purposes.

Re:Regolith?

[Hylandr]

It'd be really Kewl if luna turned out to be an R64, then we'd be set!

- Dan.

Re:Regolith?

[Yvanhoe]

There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon

It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon.
Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.

Re:Regolith?

[Melibeus]

Yes but who will own the P.O.S.? And who's going to take responsibility for fueling it?
I dont think we have an ice belt in this system either.

Re:Regolith?

[Hylandr]

Well if Politics in this alliance proceed anything like the various space stations we have had in orbit then I think Ice would be the least of our concerns.

Let concord sort it out.

- Dan.

Re:Regolith?

[Crudely_Indecent]

For others who didn't know about that discovery:

http://www.space.com/6904-uranium-moon.html

Re:Regolith?

[AmiMoJo]

Nuclear is too controversial to ever get the go-ahead, especially since the power beam could easily be used as a weapon of sorts.

Helium-3 is the best option. Once shipped back to earth each country can buy it and use it for its own fusion reactors. I am actually somewhat surprised that no government has seriously proposed this yet. If done in co-operation with other spare-faring nations the cost wouldn't even be that high. No need to send people, just robots.

Re:Regolith?

[DrVomact]

There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon

It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon. Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.

I agree with your first suggestion, but am a bit of wary of the last one (when a power-beam operator says "oopsie" because he's just let the beam track across Manhattan...well that would be more than a minor incident.)

On the other hand, building a fleet of real spaceships using the Orion propulsion principle to explore the solar system—and maybe even further out—is something that I think would be super-worthwhile. Of course, exploring would not be the only purpose of such a fleet. Others would be to build new factories and mines throughout the solar system. A real Orion could easily carry enough cargo to start a basic set of industrial installations, along with a small city of workers and technical experts that will make the new enterprise work.

Before such ships can be built, more is needed than a uranium refinery (or breeder reactor) on the moon. That will provide fuel (presuming the parent is correct in saying there's lots of uranium to be found on the moon). To build a ship, you're going to need a full-fledged industrial establishment on or about the Moon. You're going to need metallurgical experts, mining experts who can find and mine the requiring metal-bearing ores, and mechanical designers and factories that can build structural support members and metallic hull plates. You will need expertise in the design and manufacture of electronic hardware that will fulfill the manifold functions needed by the Orions. You'd need experts in hydroponic gardening, because rations that have to be shipped up from earth are going to cost a fortune. You'd have to find all the materials needed to build electronics, also. (In the short term, perhaps for the first ship, electronics could be sent up from Earth; they're relatively light, and not terribly expensive to launch. The same thing is true for small consumer goods. But eventually, the new High Industrial Enterprise should aim to be self-sufficient, as any political instability on Earth would very quickly leave them isolated.

The real difficulty of starting an Orion-based space civilization in our solar system is that getting the money to fund that first expedition is going to be very difficult. The only thing that will accomplish this is to convince potential investors that there will be a monetary reward for investing in the project. This has happened before—for example, risk-takers financed many trade journeys to far-off and sometimes virtually unknown lands in the 16th through the 18th centuries. Some of these investors became rich, others lost their shirts. Good capitalists know that every investment brings with it a degree of risk, and a certain probability of lucrative success. The risk has never stopped capitalists from investing—providing they have been convinced that the chances of a big win outweigh the risks.

The problem then becomes: what rewards would accrue to earth-bound investors who financed the initial expedition to go to the moon, and build a technical/industrial complex that will, in turn, build an Orion? That is the crucial question; if it can be answered well, then the project will happen; if it cannot be answered satisfactorily, then we can forget about the "high frontier". Nobody on Earth is going to get wealthy because the expedition mines uranium to build an Orion, for in that case nothing is actua

Re:Regolith?

[morgauxo]

You could always build the ship on Earth (probably in pieces to be assembled in orbit) and just get the fuel from the moon. Whatever is easier. The point is to get the Uranium from the moon so that a catastrophic launch failure can't spread it around the Earth's atmosphere.

Re:Regolith?

[Antisyzygy]

Space elevator?

Re:Regolith?

[Teancum]

There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon, but I suspect companies such as Weyland-Yutani may find it a worth while exercise for research purposes.

Oh, really?

Helium-3 has been noted as one element found within the lunar regolith that is not only worth while, but profitable in terms of export from the Moon to return to the Earth. I'll admit that its primary purpose would be as a fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, but it does have other uses particularly for cyrogenic research as it turns out that particular isotope is one of the coldest known liquids in terms of its boiling point... something useful if you want to cool something down to a very low temperature. As such, it is an excellent refrigerant for a freezer that goes down to less than 10 Kelvin. It has some other uses too, but that is its primary application at the moment beside fusion research. It is also an isotope that is incredibly rare on the Earth and thus very expensive to produce.

Other more practical applications of lunar regolith is to use it as a gravel base for cement. This I'll admit has applications mainly on the Moon itself in terms of construction materials to make facilities, but it is a legitimate application that can be very beneficial and is certainly cheap compared to bringing materials from the Earth. A parabolic mirror can sinter the regolith into essentially bricks.... plus extract some needed oxygen and other trace gasses in the process. I'd call that very useful, even if bringing those bricks back to the Earth would only be souvenirs at best.

While it is admittedly a small market, there is also a market for simply having "Moon rocks" as something exotic, and I think there will continue to be at least some sort of market for that for awhile by space fans.

Re:Regolith?

[maxwell demon]

Space elevator?

Space is already up there. There's no need to elevate it. :-)

Re:Regolith?

[Yvanhoe]

Nuclear is too controversial to ever get the go-ahead,

Sure, but as someone who is writing on a computer powered by 78% of nuclear energy, I'll consider that it is plausible nonetheless.

especially since the power beam could easily be used as a weapon of sorts.

No it could probably not. We don't know how to make a focused-enough beam so that it would be lethal when arriving on earth. The reception area should probably be thousands of square meters covered with specifically designed antennas or rectennas

Helium-3 is the best option. Once shipped back to earth each country can buy it and use it for its own fusion reactors. I am actually somewhat surprised that no government has seriously proposed this yet.

Well I missed the announcement about a working fusion power plant...

Re:Regolith?

[Yvanhoe]

Contrary to popular belief, a power beam would not be lethal and would require a huge area of reception antennas.

Note that the moon could be the refinery for the ship that could be built on earth or in its orbit.

Of course if Orion ships prove doable, I expect that people will want to manufacture as much of them as possible outside of Earth's gravity well.

Re:Regolith?

[crunchygranola]

There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon

It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon. Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.

First off - you do realize that Orion ships don't "burn" bulk natural uranium in a manner anything like a chemical rocket, right? That is, the uranium mined on the moon must be enriched to nearly pure U-235, and then fabricated into nuclear bombs. All of this infrastructure would have to be built on the moon to get that "weight savings" of shipping U-325 off of Earth.

Second, how much U-235 does an Orion ship require? According to the Wikipedia page a mid-size Orion craft weighing ~2000 tons (the Space Shuttle orbiter itself weighs only 78 tonnes so this is a huge ship by today's standards) needs 1080 bombs for a fuel load. Each bomb requires about 1 critical mass of U-235, weighing 15 kg or so. Thus the total weight savings in fueling up the Orion is 16 tonnes, less than 1% of the mass of the ship. The bombs themselves (since they require a lot of mass in addition to the fissile fuel to arrange the explosion and focus their energy) weigh something like 500 tonnes, so we are only saving 3% of the weight of the bombs. So the great expense of duplicating Earth-side uranium mining and enrichment save only a trivial fraction of the mass that must be lifted off Earth (how much do those Lunar factories weigh?)

Second - the cost of a gram of U-235 content in reactor fuel (before fabrication) is about $55 per gram. The cost of going to highly enriched uranium will raise this somewhat, but enrichment is only half the cost and most of the separative work to make highly enriched uranium is already done just to make low enriched fuel. Meanwhile the Russian Proton can lift payload into orbit for $4.30 per gram, so the added cost to sending HEU to the moon is a small fraction (~7% or so) of the cost of making it on Earth. Any production process on the Moon will be far more expensive.

So no, this is not a reasonable idea.

Re:Regolith?

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with fusion is that it needs very high temperatures. Apparently a Helium-3 atmosphere allows fusion at a much lower and more manageable temperature, thus making it feasible.

I believe the technology is still at the experimental stage due to the difficulty in acquiring Helium-3. I suppose it is similar to nuclear power before 1945. IIRC one of the guys who walked on the moon formed a company that was trying to get funding to mine the moon for H3.

Re:Regolith?

[Coren22]

I'll take care of the fuel as long as I get a cut of the ISK, oh, and a Rorqual would be nice to it doesn't take forever to fuel...after all, we only have progressed to the shuttle stage so far.

Re:Regolith?

[__aatirs3925]

Maybe helium-3 will work, but we won't know until we play lunar mooncraft and build giant mudkips and winged-dang-doodles out of h3 cubes. That's the only way to be sure. Just be careful of the monsters on the dark side of the moon.

Easy Legal Fix.

[Beardo the Bearded]

Please direct all complaints to:

Luna Mining Company
1 Moon Drive
Moon

Re:Easy Legal Fix.

[pinkushun]

Damn, moon.com is already taken!

Re:Easy Legal Fix.

[Vectormatic]

how about moon.mn, moon.ln, moon.moo or some other luna specific TLD?

Re:Easy Legal Fix.

[HereIAmJH]

Damn, moon.com is already taken!

Obviously this is a good opportunity for a new TLD cash grab.

LunaMining.moon

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?)

Re:Energy requirements?

[Trapick]

It does take a lot of energy to get there, but returning from the moon is *lots* easier. You're not hampered by an atmosphere, and there's a lot less gravity to concern yourself with - so if there's anything that valuable - like Helium-3, if we ever get fusion working, it's not *that* expensive to return it to earth. I've also seen ideas for railgun-style launchers - then you'd have some enormous initial cost, but the marginal cost for a payload back to earth would be next to nothing - just the solar/nuclear power to run the magnets. Also, the moon is a good launching place for any other space exploration (or asteroid mining) we ever want to do.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Amorymeltzer]

Mike Wall's piece brings it up. Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, which are the major components of rocket fuel. The idea is to mine and process it on the moon, then set up refueling stations in LEO so that you only need to carry enough fuel for part of the way. The hard part is getting off of Earth - going to the Moon, landing, taking off, and returning to Earth is much cheaper. That's why Apollo 13 could make it - big rocket going, small rocket coming back. If you eliminate the need for an über rocket at the first stage, that means smaller, lighter rockets carrying less weight, which means vastly, vastly cheaper travel costs, which makes it worth it if you can keep the good.

Re:Energy requirements?

[painandgreed]

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.

We would not be mining the moon for anything that would go back down the gravity well to Earth. We would be mining it for resources for space exploration and operations instead of mining Earth for them. The moon, being smaller has a much smaller cost of getting materials into orbit. If we need a sufficient amount of those materials, it becomes cheaper to ship a mining operation from Earth to the moon and then those materials to space than to ship all the materials straight from Earth. Water is the main resource people are talking about and to reach that break even point, we'd need megatons of the stuff. The only operations that might being to need that much resources from the moon would be large scale habitation or perhaps a trip to Mars. in short, out side of pure science, there will not be any need to mine the moon till there is already a great deal of activity in space at which point mining the moon will just be a cost cutting method.

Re:Energy requirements?

[mibe]

Helium-2, rare earths, and who says we necessarily need to send everything back to Earth?

Re:Energy requirements?

[pspahn]

What's wrong with using oil? It's working well here on Earth.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Skidborg]

I'm just going to put a preemptive "Whoosh" here before anyone replies to you.

Re:Energy requirements?

[moteyalpha]

It would seem that the dark and light sides of the moon comprises a heat engine. For example, a tube which was placed about the pole and filled with gas, would expand in areas exposed to the sun and contract away from the sun in a continuous cycle, much like the engine that powers the Earths weather. It would this would be extensible and provide the local energy by turbine to operate some robotic process.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Antidamage]

You're new to the moon, aren't you?

Re:Energy requirements?

[Chryana]

I had similar thoughts when I read the summary. From reading the article, it seems the plan would be to do some robotic mining in order to prepare to create a moon base, so this is not purely about mining. If someone has more knowledge of this topic, feel free to correct me here, but it seems it would be much cheaper to do mining in the asteroid belt rather than to go back to the moon, because you avoid the cost of launch out of the moon gravity well. Of course, going to the asteroid belt requires solving a different set of problems, since the journey is longer and farther from the Earth.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Picardo85]

certain isotopes of gases which would be great for use in fusion chambers are found in "abundance", compared to on earth that is, are found in the moon soil. Some very rare metals can also be found on the moon. But i don't think space travel is energy efficient yet for another 10-15 years at least for those ventures to be economically viable.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Cryacin]

I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water?

Well, what about the unobtanium? You know, the elements on the periodic table found right between Illudium and weapon's grade Balloneyum.

Re:Energy requirements?

[antifoidulus]

Giant escalator! there, problem solved.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

Easily fixed. Build a space elevator. No, wait. That would make it dirt cheap to haul water from the Earth's oceans onto geostationary orbit.

Re:Energy requirements?

[tylersoze]

Helium 2? What universe are you from? One where the strong nuclear force is 2% greater?

Re:Energy requirements?

[aquila.solo]

No. The "dark side" of the moon always faces away from the earth. It doesn't always face away from the sun. It is fully illuminated during the "new moon" phase.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Energy requirements?

[confused one]

Why haul it. Just attach a tube and siphon the water out of the ocean : )

Re:Energy requirements?

[Shihar]

No, they aren't. The moon is tidally locked with Earth. That means that the moon always faces Earth, not that it always faces the sun. This is why you always see the same face of the moon. What part of the moon is getting hit by the sun does indeed change. The "dark side of the moon" is the side Earth doesn't see, but the Sun sees it all the time.

Re:Energy requirements?

[reboot246]

Hardly. The "dark side" of the moon gets as much illumination as the side we see. We call it "dark" because we can't see it from Earth.

You sure you're a geek?

Re:Energy requirements?

[wizardforce]

Helium-3 in the long term. Solar energy is also extremely abundant above Earth's atmosphere. It's easier energetically speaking, to manufacture solar cell components from resources extracted from the moon and ship it to LEO than it is to do so on Earth and ship it up to LEO. The idea is to have solar cells in LEO or Geostationary orbit and beam the power to ground stations in the form of microwave power.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Thing 1]

Won't mining the moon screw up all life on Earth, if we mine enough? Remove enough mass from the moon and it'll escape Earth's orbit; but even before it does that, it will change the lunar cycle, possibly affecting tides as well as, perhaps, menstrual cycles. (Yes, I am likely thinking far into the future.)

Re:Energy requirements?

[rangek]

I think you mean helium-3. Helium-2 is quite impossible.

Re:Energy requirements?

[T-Bone-T]

He brings up a good idea but poor execution. According to the recently released illumination map there are many places where this could be done.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

Because A.C. Clarke said so;) In Songs of Distant Earth, the advanced space-faring humans (as against the native humans of the ocean planet Thalassa) haul water from the world ocean by freezing a few cubic meters of it at a time and then pulling the blocks of ice up.

The difference between hauling up ice cubes and siphoning water is the difference between using a bucket to fetch water for your small camp (a digital activity that can be measured by the number of trips to and from the camp) and diverting a river to bring water to a whole town (a continuous and thereby analog activity). Siphoning water may be more efficient in the long haul, but initially more expensive and even more daunting than building an already technically challenging beanstalk to the sky. Just think of the excess mass that would be added to the elevator complex by the pipe and the water flowing through it.

Re:Energy requirements?

[zdepthcharge]

Short answer: No.

Re:Energy requirements?

[kanto]

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?)

Helium-3 has been discussed as an energy source on it's own and there has been interest in mining it on the moon (extraterrestrial supplies).

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

Geothermal? (does the moon have any geothermal energy to be tapped?)

Geothermal? For sure it doesn't.

(hint: Geo comes from Gea or Gaia).

Re:Energy requirements?

[Jesus_666]

A SolaGen MkI should provide enough power for all resources-related operations although I'd think they'd build better replacements as soon as possible in order to build Carracks to get the material back to Earth.

The real problem is that mining can't be done without at least fifty colonists so before we try to work out mining we'll first have to worry about building an S.I.O.S. and getting it up there.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Tisha_AH]

It would be called lunathermal but yes, they think that the moon has at least a small molten core. The problem is that we are used to geothermal energy coming in some form of carrier (water) and in that regard the moon is a pretty dry place. There are more than enough thermal differences between sun/shade on the moon that you would not need to go to the complexity of drilling a borehole to get to a hot spot. Just put it in direct sunlight and there is a few hundred degrees of difference. A better bet might be to use a Carnot cycle engine (let's say with ammonia as a working fluid in a closed loop system, part in the shade, part in the sun). Or Peltier thermoelectric conversion (same hot/cold difference but with the direct conversion to DC electricity). For human habitation the best bet is underground (the deeper the better) to stabilize the temperature extremes, shield from radiation and as a fine building material. We have had a little bit of long term experience in operating machinery in a near vacuum (Mars) where odd things happen (solids that flow like fluids) and with bearing surfaces where conventional lubricants are fairly rare (other than the shuttle or the ISS). A solar furnace on the moon would develop a tremendous amount of heat for smelting operations. The moon appears to have abundant resources like aluminum in the regolith but it may be harder to find iron (meteorite mining). Going to the moon will need to yield "something" that is more difficult to get or manufacture than on the earth. Finding that technology and the market for the products will be a big challenge.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

It would seem that the dark and light sides of the moon comprises a heat engine. For example, a tube which was placed about the pole and filled with gas, would expand in areas exposed to the sun and contract away from the sun in a continuous cycle, much like the engine that powers the Earths weather.

It would this would be extensible and provide the local energy by turbine to operate some robotic process.

Theoreticaly it should work. Practically, the cosine-law is your worst enemy...
1. staying close to the poles - building cost constraints - very poor angle of incidence ...
2. on a 28 days for a "full engine cycle" with probably about 1/3 of this duration in a situation where the gradient is not good enough (extremities of your "tube" too close to the day-night terminators) - need hell of a lot of "thermal inertia" to get the most of the "max temperature differential" period)

somehow... I don't think it's gonna work too well.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

Won't mining the moon screw up all life on Earth, if we mine enough?

No, the principle of "most restricting factor governs the ecology" acts nice... water is bound to finish much earlier. To continue mining, you'll need to replace it - ice asteroid capture? If you are able to capture asteroids, no need to mine the moon anymore.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Opie812]

There is no dark side of the moon. it's all dark.

Best album evar.

Re:Energy requirements?

[abulafia]

You mean all that oil on the moon, from the decaying space-dinosaurs, right?

Re:Energy requirements?

[PieSquared]

The "literal" dark side (that is, the side which isn't currently lit) changes, with a sunrise every ~28 days.

The "figurative" dark side (that is, the side which isn't facing the earth) is fixed.

Since it's the literal one that would be involved in any sort of heat engine, it's possible that you have them confused.

Re:Energy requirements?

[pspahn]

Precisely.

Re:Energy requirements?

[blueg3]

Helium-2 is quite possible, it just has a short half-life.

Re:Energy requirements?

[skine]

I'm glad you wooshed yourself.

But you really should stop writing in the second person in public fora.

Re:Energy requirements?

[TapeCutter]

"I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value?"

Knowledge. Learning how to use robots to build and maintain an autonomous moon base would be valuable in and of itself.

Re:Energy requirements?

[The_mad_linguist]

He, too, is from the real universe. This is just some weird parallel world where slashdot editors don't, the US military has giant blimps, the president is black, and the 2004 US civil war never happened.

Re:Energy requirements?

[genner]

Precisely.

Prehistoric moon whales.....that is all.

Re:Energy requirements?

[WillDraven]

Like this?

Re:Energy requirements?

[countertrolling]

If you reduce the human effort sufficiently, any venture will become profitable.

Re:Energy requirements?

[kindbud]

Luna is the Roman name for the moon goddess. The Greek name is Selene. Thus terms like selenography, selenothermal, selenotectonic are used to refer to processes and studies of the Moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Mr. Slippery]

The "dark side" of the moon always faces away from the earth.

The "far side" of the moon always faces away from earth. The "far side" is often mistakenly called the "dark side". But at any given time, there is an actual dark side, just as there is on earth -- i.e., a night side. Though the night side and day side shift places over the course of a lunar "day", it should still be possible in theory to run a heat engine.

Might even be possible to run a heat engine off the temperature difference in one place over time: gas filled cylinder with a piston. Put it in the lunar sunlight, gas expands, moves the piston. Night falls, gas cools, piston moves back. This would be impractical on Earth, where nights aren't that much cooler than days, but with the greater lunar temperature difference...maybe. At least a groovy physics experiment.

Re:Energy requirements?

[coryking]

Windmills don't take mass away from the planet. Mining a bunch of stuff and shipping it off the planet (er, moon) does.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

Actually, you would very likely be wrong. It has been determined that the moon's core is molten. As such, that indicates that the core has a lot of heat.

Hint, once again: geo comes from Gea or Gaia: the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth .

(spoiler for those unable to take the hint: even if the Moon have a molten core, the energy obtained from it would one choose to tap it would not be called Geo-thermal - would it be Selena-thermal?).

Re:Energy requirements?

[currently_awake]

Unfortunately there isn't a single thing in all the known universe located outside the earths atmosphere that is worth the cost of shipping. Even if pure weapons grade plutonium was sitting on the moon unguarded, it still wouldn't be worth the expense to get it. (even for terrorists).

Re:Energy requirements?

[GooberToo]

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.

Not as much as you seem to imply. Escape velocity from the moon does not take nearly as much energy as the other way around. Furthermore, sending cargo vs humans does not require the same timeliness and thusly, the same energy.

So yes, sending stuff to the moon requires lots of energy. Send stuff home without a human cargo, not so much. This is especially so once you consider the Earth's pull can greatly contribute to return trips if time is not a significant consideration.

Re:Energy requirements?

[currently_awake]

I think storing the suns heat in molten salts (underground), and radiating the heat out into space during the night might work. Of course it would work on earth just as well, and a lot cheaper. If your goal was net energy you might use a parabolic mirror (in solar orbit, say Mercury) to focus a beam of light onto a solar array in a high solar synchronous orbit(to avoid heating the earth), that would then beam down the energy as microwaves. Due to the mirrors proximity to the sun it would get much more light than the solar array alone, and focusing the beam would keep that energy density. Of course you'd need 2 or 3 due to eclipses.

Re:Energy requirements?

[currently_awake]

It's generally a bad idea to switch to an energy source that is -less- common than the one you've got. Considering that there are no known reserves of this stuff, I think we're wasting time and money designing/prototyping stuff for its use.

Re:Energy requirements?

[VortexCortex]

2. on a 28 days for a "full engine cycle" with probably about 1/3 of this duration in a situation where the gradient is not good enough (extremities of your "tube" too close to the day-night terminators) - need hell of a lot of "thermal inertia" to get the most of the "max temperature differential" period)

somehow... I don't think it's gonna work too well.

Wait, Terminators are on the moon? As we speak?!
Hmmm, makes sense -- That's probably a good angle to cast the Sky-Net from...

Seriously though: What about the moon's south pole? It gets sun all the time.

Now all we have to do is Find a deep dark crater on the south pole of the moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[currently_awake]

You don't need rocket fuel to travel from the moon to the earth, a good catapult will suffice. (though slowing down at the end might be tricky). Likewise an ion engine doesn't require any form of combustion, you could use aluminum as reaction mass if you had a power source. The only time you actually -need- rocket fuel is for getting out of the earths atmosphere (or you build a really long catapult, so the acceleration doesn't kill you).

Re:Energy requirements?

[robot256]

Your sense of scale is awful. The moon has a mass of 7*10^22 kg. Even if you mine 10 ton per second for 4 billion years, you would only remove 1.8 percent of the moon mass. You might as well try to empty the great lakes with a spoon.

This. It's the same reason we don't need to worry about sending tons of space ships away from Earth. We are just tiny specs in the grand scheme of even our tiny nook of the cosmos.

Re:Energy requirements?

[INeededALogin]

rail gun... you do realize that those rails need physical contact with the projectile to fire... that causes friction... friction causes wear and tear.

Seriously, if you want a maintenance nightmare, put a railgun on the moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[kanto]

So what is -more- common on the -moon- that we have got atm. which could support industry there? Also wouldn't it be a question of energy yield and not available tonnage? I do understand Helium-3 belongs in the long shot category, but I think it is in the spirit of the article.

Re:Energy requirements?

[mibe]

Yes, typo on my part.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

Seriously though: What about the moon's south pole? It gets sun all the time.

Seriously, what about it? Does it offer an angle of incidence good enough (say +/-15 degrees around the normal?).
Otherwise... heck... read what the cosine law has to say, will you? Until you convince the US Senate to abolish it, I'm affraid we can't do something economically viable, as much as I would like.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

They already said it in the article: fuel, in the form of hydrogen and oxygen (made from water on the moon). This fuel would be useful for refueling spacecraft, space stations, and satellites in Earth orbit, because it'd be cheaper than fuel brought up from Earth's surface.

The question is if there's enough demand for H/O fuel in earth orbit to make the setup costs for a mining operation on the Moon worthwhile.

As for fuel to get back, you don't need to get back. You only need to send supplies to the Moon to set up a mining operation, and then have ships to ferry fuel back to earth orbit. Getting between the Moon and earth orbit doesn't take much energy; it's only escaping Earth's gravity near the surface that's really bad.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

That's easy: solar panel arrays, as you said. The moon has no atmosphere, so solar power would work extremely well there, especially at the Peak of Eternal Light.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly, it's just like the "Dark Ages". They were called that not because they were horrible, but because almost no records were kept at the time, so we have very very little historical knowledge of that period. Of course, this probably means it was a shitty time to live too, but we can't know for sure because of the lack of records.

Re:Energy requirements?

[pinkushun]

Ha! I see what you did there! Clever . . .

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how exactly would the railgun thing work? Sure, I can see how you can shoot a big container from a railgun on the moon's surface back to the Earth, but then how do you get it to Earth's surface intact, without it just burning up in the atmosphere, once it gets caught by Earth's gravity? Is the container going to be something more complex, with wings, an automated guidance system to land it, and ablative shielding on the underside?

Re:Energy requirements?

[moteyalpha]

The sine rule does not apply. You make the assumption that it would facing upward and it does apply on the surface area to irradiation on Earth because the surface is of course at an angle to the sun but a solar panel pointing at the sun is face on as an example. As far as the economic feasibility it depends on the ability to move material without great cost and that has nothing to do with a moon engine. There is an open source project to go to the moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

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.

Unless it turns out not to be more efficient. Aside from the matter of regulation, which on its own could make Earth-sourced resources more expensive than getting them from the Moon, it also worth noting that there's only a limited amount of stuff in Earth's garbage dumps. If you want more than that, you'll either have to mine it from Earth or elsewhere. It's also worth noting that the energy being "efficiently used" is lunar energy not Earth energy. It may well turn out that shipping stuff from the Moon to Earth is an efficient enough use of lunar energy.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

Hint, once again: geo comes from Gea or Gaia: the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth .

Most of the Moon comes from Earth in the first place, if we're going to be that pedantic.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

The sine rule does not apply. You make the assumption that it would facing upward and it does apply on the surface area to irradiation on Earth because the surface is of course at an angle to the sun but a solar panel pointing at the sun is face on as an example.

Oh, I see... and this is where the Helium-2 comes in effect: because everybody knows that a neuron-less Helium (aka unobtainium) will have antigravitational properties.
Thus if filling a baloon with He-2, even if the Moon doesn't have any atmosphere, one can keep a huge solar panel erected - showing always a full side straight to the sun. No problems thus with multiple (smaller) solar panels in which one in front would be casting a looong shadow on the one behind it.
Clever, sir, very clever.

There is an open source project to go to the moon.

I think I'll get involved on that one. Testing and QA springs into my mind.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

Hint, once again: geo comes from Gea or Gaia: the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth .

Most of the Moon comes from Earth in the first place, if we're going to be that pedantic.

Then, let me stay pedantic a bit more: "Most of the Moon comes from Earth" is only a theory, for the time being. The very existence of the water on the Moon raises some supplementary questions on it:

Most astronomers believe a rogue planet collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The impact sent molten debris into orbit around Earth, some of which coalesced to form the moon.
Under this scenario, the heat of the impact should have vaporized light elements, including the hydrogen necessary for water to form.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

The very existence of the water on the Moon raises some supplementary questions on it:

No it doesn't. There isn't much water on the Moon as expected by theory.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

Yes, I am likely thinking far into the future.

You do realize that if we do nothing, the Moon will eventually breakup a long time from now? First, Earth's rotational energy is transferred to Earth-Moon system resulting in the Moon moving away from Earth, but down the road, when Earth has a day about a month long, that energy is going to be transferred to the Sun-Earth system. The Earth-Moon system will move away from the Sun as the Moon spirals closer to Earth. And somewhere in there, the Sun will go nova, meaning it doesn't matter any more.

Re:Energy requirements?

[c0lo]

If you say so... I'm not the one to contradict you. Just wonder who the National Geographic think they are to contradict you?

Re:Energy requirements?

[PhunkySchtuff]

OK. so the mass of the moon is, oh about 7.346 x 10^22kg that's approximately 73459000000000000000 tonnes. If we extract, say, 1 million tonnes of stuff from the moon, that's about 1.3 x 10^-17 %, also known as a poofteenth of a percent.
According to my calculations, this will be enough to move the moon further away from us by about 4.76 x 10^-11 metres or approximately the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

Just wonder who the National Geographic think they are to contradict you?

They aren't a peer-reviewed astrophysics journal.

Re:Energy requirements?

[mrjb]

Remove enough mass from the moon and it'll escape Earth's orbit;

That might happen if you shoot the mass into outer space. But in moon mining, mass is being transported from the moon to earth, so the total amount of mass shared by earth and moon would stay roughly the same (even if there would be some losses in mass-to-energy conversion for transport), and so would gravity between the two. In fact you might wonder if the opposite wouldn't happen- it's easy for a big fat earth to attract a body mined down to the size of a golf ball. So which is true? I'll leave it as a an exercise to the reader (warning: geek snipe!)

Re:Energy requirements?

[ThunderBird89]

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?)

Not only rocket fuel, if the fusion research finally bears fruit, Helium-3 is more abundant on the Moon then on Earth. Additionally, the low gravity of the Moon enables metallurgic techniques impossible or uneconomical here, which may result that are worth the increased price; and they can be smelted from locally available metals from the regolith.

The problem is not just energy, the real problem is legal: the Outer Space Treaty does forbid exploitation (which the article claims it doesn't), only permitting sampling for research purposes, and what the article leaves out is that all extraterrestrial territory is, by definition, common heritage of mankind. This means, by extension, that so are the extracted resources, so any nation on Earth can form a claim to them, such as Zimbabwe, as well as a claim to a tour of the extraction facility and a presence on the Moon. I'm not sure the five current space-capable nations would want to bear the costs to that.
The sea floor has a similar status, but in that case, there's the International Seabed Authority to regulate the situation. However, no such body has been set up in relation to the Moon (although the Moon agreement did call for the establishment of one, but since it was never ratified by the space-states, one could say it failed due to lack of interest).

Thus, the first obstacle to be tackled is the legal status of the Moon, the required governing body, and the status of extraterrestrial real-estate in national law. Only then can (should) corporations and states think about the technological and energy challenges.

Finally, something reminded me that I need to work on my thesis...

Re:Energy requirements?

[Samurai Tony]

Millenium 2.2 FTW! I loved that game and wasted many, many an evening / night on it.

Re:Energy requirements?

[imakemusic]

There's no such thing as the dark side of the moon unless you're talking about albums by Pink Floyd. Maybe you mean the far side of the moon?

Re:Energy requirements?

[yariv]

The moon's gravity well is shallow enough to allow for a space elevator form currently available materials, plus having no atmosphere allows for a cable to reach very close to the surface. It is possible to get things out for quite cheap, given a huge initial investment. Of course, any lunar mining operation will need a huge initial investment.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Plazmid]

The moon's gravity well is much shallower than Earth's How much shallower you might ask? Well to get a pretty good idea, take a look at the Saturn V compared to the Apollo Lunar Module. If you want to get more technical, the mass ratio, or initial mass of rocket(w/ propellant)/final mass of rocket minus propellant of a rocket increases exponentially with the amount of delta V you need. So in other words you need 37* times "more rocket" to launch the same amount of mass to LEO from the Earth than it does from the Moon all other things being equal. * mass ratio =e^ (Delta V/ Exhaust velocity) Delta V from Lunar surface to LEO 6.4 Delta V from Earth surface to LEO 10 e^10/e^6.4= 36.5982344

Re:Energy requirements?

[Vectormatic]

make it a gauss-gun instead and you are set

Re:Energy requirements?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

He3 is a desperate attempt my moon lovers to have a reason to go to the moon.

First of all we can't fuse DT which is >1000x easier to fuse than He3 or He3D. So its not a fuel for anything we can build right now at all.

Secondly, if we can fuse He3 or He3D we can also fuse DD which *gives* He3 ash. This source of He3 will be cheaper by a long shot.

Finally there is very little He3 on the moon and is very dilute. .01ppm or about 10000x less concentrated that Uranium ore and you can't use leaching. Its probably going to cost you more energy to get the He3 than contained in the He3. For reference coal has something like several 100x more energy per kg than He3 in the moon surface.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

The principle of the thread requires that I explain why I'm not going to answer that. I don't answer AC unless there is an important issue that has application beyond the user who probably won't reply back. So I'm not answering you, AC, I'm answering all those people who'd otherwise think I'm just punting on this really important issue.

Re:Energy requirements?

[aquila.solo]

...The "far side" is often mistakenly called the "dark side"...

You're quite right. I was using the colloquial meanings for dark/light side. I apologize for any confusion that may have caused. The AC GP seemed to think that daylight didn't move on the moon, which is clearly false.

I agree that the heat engine idea bears further exploration. Your idea of having the piston in one place is interesting also. The ideal Carnot engine requires all the energy exchanges to be "reversible" to achieve maximum efficiency. This usually means very slow movement; much slower than we find practical in our IC and steam engines. Letting the cycle take ~28 days at a single location could get us much closer, assuming we could still harness it effectively.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Beezlebub33]

Why use the Greek name and not the Roman name? Is this standard scientific terminology? Just wondering.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Beezlebub33]

Or you could just look at it graphically: http://xkcd.com/681

Re:Energy requirements?

[Beezlebub33]

Dude, we're supposed to be burying all our nuclear waste on the moon, and then at some point it will go critical and launch into space, and then people will get to have sex with really hot aliens. Don't mess this fantasy up for me!

(Does the fact that this is what I think of when consider the uses of the moon mean that I'm really old?)

Re:Energy requirements?

[coolmadsi]

Windmills don't take mass away from the planet. Mining a bunch of stuff and shipping it off the planet (er, moon) does.

People have mined stuff from Earth and sent it into space (rockets, satalites). I don't think there's been a noticable difference. I'd be surprised if there was enough material worth mining on the moon to make a significant impact on its mass if it were removed.

Re:Energy requirements?

[morgauxo]

No. The idea is to use lunar materials in space, not on Earth. Once you are set up on the moon it takes much less energy to get your materials into space than it does from Earth.

Re:Energy requirements?

[morgauxo]

Blame Pink Floyd

Re:Energy requirements?

[SuricouRaven]

Lots to get there. Not so much to get back. Compare size of the rockets to get the Apollo missions up vs the tiny little lunar lander.. only half of which was needed to make escape velocity. You still need some energy, but surprisingly little. The tricky part would be manufacturing the cargo rockets themselves, or sending empty cargo rockets from Earth. This is why many hypothetical mining schemes use accelerators - all you need to do is wrap your semi-refined moon rock in something conductive and feed it in one end, and aim for it to land somewhere uninhabitable on earth. Added bonus: Doubles as a WMD that lets you drop a hypersonic rock on any city you don't like.

Re:Energy requirements?

[SuricouRaven]

Significently less friction in one-sixth gravity.

Re:Energy requirements?

[rangek]

Helium-2 has a negative binding energy. That makes it pretty impossible to me.

Re:Energy requirements?

[tophermeyer]

What about a comically over-sized trebuchet?

Re:Energy requirements?

[Antisyzygy]

Ho there Grishnakh! I challenge ye to combat with my mighty obsidian staff upon the Peak of Eternal Light! Or, if thoust prefer we may battle in the depths of the Chasm of Eternal Darkness amongst the goblin hordes!

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

Wait, Terminators are on the moon? As we speak?!

Yes, except during a lunar eclipse.

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

Probably simply because we use the Greek name for earth, so it is consistent to use the Greek name for the moon as well.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Vectormatic]

nice idea, but given that gravity is lower on the moon, the counterweight of the trebuchet would only hold 1/6th of the energy it would on earth, so you would need the same size treb as you would on earth, save for less sturdy construction.

Now a mangonel on the other hand....

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

Won't mining the moon screw up all life on Earth, if we mine enough?

The mass of the moon is 7.36 * 10^22 kilograms. For comparison, the total annual world mining of coal is 5990 * 10^9 kg. Assuming the total mining on the moon would be as large (which I consider highly unlikely), then the mass of the moon would be reduced by about 0.000000008% per year. If that's not negligible, I don't know what is. Even if we had started this right after the dinosaurs died, we would have used up just half a percent of the moon. Assuming there's that much useful material on it to begin with.

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

Well the product of two (positive) numbers (masses, in this case) of given sum is maximal if the two numbers are equal, and it forms a parabolic curve (i.e. only one extremum). So removing mass from the smaller body and adding it to the larger will reduce gravity between them.

That was too easy for a geek snipe.

Re:Energy requirements?

[hypergreatthing]

hahahahaahhahaahhaha
no.

Re:Energy requirements?

[hypergreatthing]

could be that since water only exists in permanently dark areas it could of been collected from solar winds over the course of billions of years?
What makes you think it was there since creation? Also the fact that deep compressed rock in the earth contains more water than there is in all the oceans, the same process would occur on the moon.

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

You are aware that you cannot siphon water higher than 10 meters?
Well, unless you manage to fill the tube with dark energy, because that has negative pressure ;-)

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

because everybody knows that a neuron-less Helium (aka unobtainium) will have antigravitational properties.

Well, I have good and bad news for you: The good news: Even ordinary Helium doesn't have neurons (nor any other sort of brain cells). The bad news: Despite of this, it isn't known for showing antigravity (although you can use it to lift things up here on earth).

Re:Energy requirements?

[Magada]

It could be something as simple as to be locally-manufactured by the Moon-Chinese. Remember, if you're using a railgun you're sending out stuff that can withstand fair amounts of acceleration anyway.

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

the product of two (positive) numbers (masses, in this case) of given sum is maximal if the two numbers are equal

Before anyone else replies: It's of course not only for positive numbers, but for all real numbers. I was just too lazy to think about it. But it actually just comes down to the binomial formula (a+b)*(a-b)=a^2-b^2. The sum of both numbers is, of course, 2a, and therefore the maximum is attained for b=0, i.e. both numbers being the same.

Of course masses are never negative, therefore it doesn't really matter here.

Re:Energy requirements?

[maxwell demon]

Anything with the potential to adversely affect menstrual cycles should strike fear into the hearts of mankind...

Like hop?

Re:Energy requirements?

[moteyalpha]

hahahahaahhahaahhaha no.

<humor> I am assuming that the "h and a" somehow represent an genetic sequence in the form GCAT in a binary form where ha=10 ah=01 and that this is the microcode implementation vector whose phenotype calculates the navier-stokes, the energy transfer of a spherical permanent magnet, the temperature difference and energy transfer using Fourier as well as the analysis of a Carnot engine cycle. I must also assume that the no. represents the number output, which if I read correctly is 10101010011010011010 and is 698010. </humor>
Perhaps I am mistaken.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Teancum]

It would be interesting to see if there were some substantive quantities of hydrocarbons on the Moon, and it might be some interesting proving ground for abiotic origins of petroleum if there might be petroleum reserves on the Moon. At the moment we simply don't know if that even might be an option on the Moon. It would prove to be useful for a number of things if found though, particularly in terms of harvesting hydrogen from petroleum and having a practical source of carbon.

In other words, it isn't nearly as far fetched as it may seem, although it wouldn't be useful in term of shipping it to the Earth.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Teancum]

It has been speculated that the Moon may have a Peak of Eternal Light that may be able to accomplish this task rather well. I'm sure there are other applications here, but such a system certainly could work rather well. Oxygen happens to be a rather abundant element on the Moon (bound chemically to the rocks), which would make an interesting gas for such a system. Pure oxygen under pressure, however, does sound at least a little dangerous.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Teancum]

He-2 may not be as impossible as you are suggesting, even though I agree that the binding energy between two protons is such that it would have an extremely short half-life.

As for any stable elements with triple digit atomic numbers, I'll leave that to science fiction writers.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Teancum]

That would be the Crater of Eternal Darkness, but otherwise spot on.

It does have a mythical feel to that name, doesn't it?

Re:Energy requirements?

[moteyalpha]

There is an open source project to go to the moon as well as Google funded x-prize and it seems reasonable that if one was to land a robot on the moon that having a power source that could support two way communication and a means to reload a robot's microcode via that link, that it would be more effective and if properly designed could support self manufacturing similar to some RepRap like circular process or the fact that a lathe can be used to create a lathe. I will probably look into the liquid-gas phase relationships of some common gases and the effectiveness of a permanent magnet inside a magnetic enclosure that functioned as a reverse rail gun to produce energy. It sounds like a fun thing to do as an exercise in mechanics.
I would think that having little robots driven by a TCP/IP link and with their own IPV6 addresses that it would be a great VR game that people would pay to play and might even make a profit mining for He3. It would seem that many people will mine imaginary materials in games.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Teancum]

It will take centuries or longer and deliberate effort to simply exceed the mass that is accumulating on both the Moon and the Earth in terms of mass that is coming to these bodies from meteors and other debris already in space.

Seriously, of the things to worry about, this has got to be near the bottom of the list of things that will be any sort of problem. There are certainly many, many other problems like the heat death of the Universe to worry about first.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Philomage]

However, for the heat engine pole encircling tube thing to work, it doesn't matter which 'side' of the moon is dark or at what time. It's a continuous loop.

Of course, would it be worth it considering the scale of creating a tube large enough to encircle the pole of a small planetoid?

Re:Energy requirements?

[Philomage]

Because "graphy", "thermal", and "tectonic" are greek suffixes.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Or a Stirling engine with the cold sink buried and the hot node exposed to the sun, or as a focus for a solar array. This is the method used by some pilot solar electric plants now. How cold would it be a few metres under the surface, relative to the exposed surface during the lunar day? It's thermal differential that makes Stirlings work, not just a source of heat.

Re:Energy requirements?

[arisvega]

So all that is needed is a space elevator, a several thousand mile long pipe built on the moon, and some nuclear explosion powered craft.

Okay, but hold your horses- I'm busy Thursday.

Re:Energy requirements?

[arisvega]

Most of the Moon comes from Earth in the first place

I wouldn't be that fast to advocate that- I haven't seen other evidence that support that theory besides a 'missing' iron Moon core, a computer simulation, and some statistics that give a collision a 'high chance' of happening.

But if you are arguing with your spine, then you also have to make the theory tell you why there is no Moon around, say, Venus.

My point; you can't just accept the parts that are convenient, and attribute the rest to randomness.

Re:Energy requirements?

[khallow]

You're absolutely right. Calling geothermal energy "selenothermal" is to be opposed. but my argument got a bit too clever.

Re:Energy requirements?

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

The moon is kind of warm inside, but you'd probably call it selenothermal power if you could harness it :P

Re:Energy requirements?

[robo_madness]

probably anybody who would benefit from space mercantilism

Re:Energy requirements?

[Coren22]

Wouldn't solar power be harmed by the moon dust? As I recall, moving parts wear out quite quickly from the moon dust.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

There's no atmosphere on the moon, so the dust stays on the ground unless it's kicked up either by astronauts walking around, spaceships landing, or meteors.

Locate the solar arrays in a place where spaceships don't land, and don't use moving parts, and there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Coren22]

Interesting idea, but I was thinking about the dust kicked up during install, as well as sun tracking arrays which seems the only way to go.

Re:Energy requirements?

[Grishnakh]

I imagine they could come up with some way of "dusting off" the arrays after installation's finished, perhaps some compressed air or something. It would only need to be done once, unless micrometeorites are a problem (I don't know).

But I'm not sure sun tracking is all that important there. I'm no expert of course, but it seems like sun tracking is only really useful here on earth for a couple of reasons: 1) our efficiency takes a hit because of the atmosphere, and also weather/clouds, so anything to mitigate that is useful, and 2) again because of the atmosphere, the amount of light striking the panels changes a lot as the angle to the sun changes from 90degrees to something less. On the moon, there's no atmosphere (or clouds), so you already get a giant boost from that, but also it shouldn't affect it much if the angle is 45 degrees.

Even here on Earth, I've read that sun tracking only gets you another 20-30%, which is why most installations don't bother because of the additional cost and maintenance. They just stick them on a roof facing south at an angle that's best overall.

Re:Energy requirements?

[tzot]

While I agree that "selenothermal" would be more consistent, mixing greek and latin to produce words is quite common in English ("heterosexual" comes to mind, there are many other examples).

Re:Energy requirements?

[Philomage]

Absolutely agree. The reason to use greek with greek and not latin is for consistancy, but it sometimes happens that they get mixed in english words anyway. It is, afterall, neither latin or greek, but merely english.

Yeah let's do it!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

There's a whole new planet just waiting to be overexploited and ruined by greedy corporations out there...

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[countertrolling]

Oh c'mon.. It's not like Hoot Owls are going to go extinct or anything

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[medcalf]

Some might say that there's a whole new planet waiting to support more humans, and the other life we have to bring along to make ours work, out there. You can stay behind and gripe.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Jeremi]

There's a whole new planet just waiting to be overexploited and ruined by greedy corporations out there...

Ruined how exactly? Is there some flourishing lunar ecosystem (complete with 10-foot smurfs) that I am not aware of?

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[flaming error]

What do we need more humans for?

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Skidborg]

The moon is as dead as a doornail already. In a few million years, every human mining operation will be pounded to dust by space debris and the moon will look exactly the same as it always has.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Target practice.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Inefficient. You get much more bang for your buck killing other people.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[flaming error]

Rather than answering my question, you inverted it, made it a statement, then attributed the statement to me? Then concluded I should kill myself?

Please ease up on the vitriol. I mean you no harm.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Kitkoan]

Its called Earth, I think it's pretty close to you. Remember things like the Earth's tide is controlled by the Moon. And while the 2002 movie of The Time Machine was an over exaggerated version of what could happen, there is always the chance of something going wrong that could have huge impact to life on Earth. We don't have a full grasp of everything the Moon does that the Earth benefits from but I for one wouldn't want to learn the hard way by having it removed.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[c0lo]

What do we need more humans for?

Somebody has to consume and pay for it.

Without enough humans to buy iPhones and take mortgages they can't afford, how are those "exponential grow bubbles" gonna last? The boom-to-bust cycle started to become boring, you know?

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[c0lo]

Hey, that's totally, like, unpatriotic and you sure must be a terrorist. RTFA:

The inspiration will be as much commercial as scientific and a desire to enhance national prestige and security.

Afterall, there's nothing wrong with greedy corporations. I mean, Mark Whittington - huge genius, I tell ya - offered two out-of-the-box solutions for free... how can we not go ahead and privatize the government, start leasing the moon and reap the profits!?

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Jeremi]

Its called Earth, I think it's pretty close to you. Remember things like the Earth's tide is controlled by the Moon.

Huh. So the worry is that we will mine so much material out of the moon that the moon's mass will decrease significantly, thus affecting the Earth's tides?

Well, let's look at some numbers and see if that's a legitimate concern. The mass of the moon is about 74 quintillion tons. For the sake of argument, let's consider an absolute worst case scenario, where greedy mining companies swarm the moon and remove a trillion tons of material from it every year for the next 10,000 years. At the end of that 10,000 years, the moon will still contain 99.986% of its current mass.

My conclusion: Earth's tides are safe for now.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[VortexCortex]

There's a whole new planet just waiting to be overexploited and ruined by greedy corporations out there...

That's what the Galactic Overseers said when they found Earth and decided to grow food--er Humans here.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Grishnakh]

Every time someone complains about the population, someone brings up this idiotic point.

Put yourself in their shoes: if you think the Earth's population is way too high, how much of an improvement will it be to commit suicide, making the population now 7.1 billion minus one? Just suggesting suicide is stupid, for this reason alone.

If someone really wants to do something about the Earth's population, they're going to look for a way to remove lots more people. Even a mass shooting will only get rid of 10-50 times the number of people as simple suicide, which still is not very many people compared to 7 billion. So obviously, unless this person can invent a virus like in "12 Monkeys" or "28 Days Later", one person simply can't do anything to make a difference.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Kitkoan]

That is a very small chance. But there are other things that might happen with worse results. Other, more likely results are things like the Moon does have liquid core. What happens if you hit a magma vein in the Moon? Possibly something like Saturns moon Enceladus which spews out what appears to be something like water. But in the our Moons case your looking more at a volcano that could spew magma and that is unknown when it will stop since there is such low gravity. This could cause things like ash to blow over the Earth, possibly enter the atmosphere or other negative side effects (like lava rocks hitting satellites). As well as the fact the a volcano on the Moon might cause it to shift orbit due to the gravity (like a jet engine, depending on the pressure and size of the volcano), if the Moon shifts orbit this can cause many major issues here on Earth. Another fact is that the Moon appears to possess light elements like sulphur and oxygen, which are both flammable. Hit a pocket of the two under the surface and your looking at issues similar to a gas pocket when oil drilling except without gravity the typical solutions might not work causing unknown effects.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Kitkoan]

Meant to use this link to mention about the Moon having a liquid core.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Beezlebub33]

So obviously, unless this person can invent a virus like in "12 Monkeys" or "28 Days Later", one person simply can't do anything to make a difference.

Well, that's kind of pessimistic. One person can do only a small amount, but lots of 'one person's together can make a huge difference. In terms of changing the population, it doesn't make sense to take the very short view of one person living or dying but the overall decisions of societies on how many children to have. And that's a function of multiple factors (child death rates, cultural importance of boys vs girls, female education, contraception availability, etc.) and people can affect these factors over time. So, don't think that you can't make a difference, since you can even if it's a small one, in combination with other people it can be huge. Just look at the changes in fertility rates of multiple countries in the past 30 years; the demographics have changed drastically, and that's all because of lots of one persons doing things to make a difference.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[jeff4747]

What happens if you hit a magma vein in the Moon? Possibly something like Saturns moon Enceladus which spews out what appears to be something like water. But in the our Moons case your looking more at a volcano that could spew magma and that is unknown when it will stop since there is such low gravity.

The surface of the moon is cold. The liquid hot magma would cool quite rapidly, plugging up the hole. After all, that's where the lunar seas came from.

This could cause things like ash to blow over the Earth

Ash from what? Volcanic ash on Earth is created by pulverized rock. The low gravity on the moon means the rock is launched upward instead of pulverized.

possibly enter the atmosphere or other negative side effects (like lava rocks hitting satellites)

You have no real understanding of just how large space is, do you?

As well as the fact the a volcano on the Moon might cause it to shift orbit due to the gravity (like a jet engine, depending on the pressure and size of the volcano)

...and you have no real understanding of just how massive the moon is either.

Another fact is that the Moon appears to possess light elements like sulphur and oxygen, which are both flammable

First, oxygen isn't flammable. Oxygen is an oxidizer that supports fire, but something else is burning. Second, how are you planning to sustain a sulfur fire without an atmosphere? Or are you asserting that the moon is covered with massive pockets of oxygen that are lined with sulfur? If that's your model the way you fight the fire is to vent the oxygen from the chamber. You're left with vacuum, and the sulfur fire goes out.

Hit a pocket of the two under the surface and your looking at issues similar to a gas pocket when oil drilling except without gravity the typical solutions might not work causing unknown effects.

Considering the typical solutions do not rely on gravity, they should work quite nicely on the moon.

Re:Yeah let's do it!

[Kitkoan]

What happens if you hit a magma vein in the Moon? Possibly something like Saturns moon Enceladus which spews out what appears to be something like water. But in the our Moons case your looking more at a volcano that could spew magma and that is unknown when it will stop since there is such low gravity.

The surface of the moon is cold. The liquid hot magma would cool quite rapidly, plugging up the hole. After all, that's where the lunar seas came from.

With enough pressure, it wouldn't. Remember, for a hole to plug up like that, it needs gravity. Thats why I mentioned Saturns moon Enceladus. Its even colder there then out Moon and they don't stop until they run out of pressure. Not because "It'll cool quite rapidly", the pressure will cause the cooling parts to keep flying outward.

This could cause things like ash to blow over the Earth

Ash from what? Volcanic ash on Earth is created by pulverized rock. The low gravity on the moon means the rock is launched upward instead of pulverized.

Liquid cord of the Moon means that is where the volcanic ash would come from. That why I mentioned what if they hit mamga. Magma is lava, it would burn and melt the sides of the whatever tunnel it is using to come out of, and would fly outward. Due to the Moons very low gravity, it wouldn't fall back down to the Moon but enter into the Earth's orbit. Similar to how Saturn's rings work.

possibly enter the atmosphere or other negative side effects (like lava rocks hitting satellites)

You have no real understanding of just how large space is, do you?

You have no real understanding of things in orbit work do you? Something like this happens, the cooling lava rocks won't go outward into space, Earth's gravity would be too strong. It would go inward, towards Earth. It's the reason satellites don't go flying out randomly into space. It's how any planet can keep a moon.

As well as the fact the a volcano on the Moon might cause it to shift orbit due to the gravity (like a jet engine, depending on the pressure and size of the volcano)

...and you have no real understanding of just how massive the moon is either.

Nor do we know just how much magma, sulpher and/or other materials are in the moon. Making an explosion large enough might cause enough of the Moon to tilt. Drain enough magma, ect, could cause the same effect. What would happen if you managed to cause enough rupturing to cause something like a new volcano the size of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano which happens to be on the smallest planet. Its possible without more information and since it's only just be figured out 2 weeks ago that the Moon most likely has a liquid core, it shows we know very little about the Moon. Also, we don't know how much pressure is built up within the Moons core, enough pressure and we make the only hole to the pressure and it could burst out, ripping a bigger hole. Maybe a volcanic eruption the size of the one that happened on Jupiters moon Io in 2002?

Another fact is that the Moon appears to possess light elements like sulphur and oxygen, which are both flammable

First, oxygen isn't flammable. Oxygen is an oxidizer that supports fire, but something else is burning. Second, how are you planning to sustain a sulfur fire without an atmosphere? Or are you asserting that the moon is covered with massive pockets of oxygen that are lined with sulfur? If that's your model the way you fight the fire is to vent the oxygen from the chamber. You're left with vacuum, and the sulfur fire goes out.

Again, we don't know enough a

They can own what they extract and process

[countertrolling]

But exclusivity over the land? Never! That's for speculators who trade nothing but currency. Screw them.

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[medcalf]

If private property is such a problem for you, perhaps I can have yours?

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[countertrolling]

The crater is like an aquifer, you get to draw from it, but you don't own the whole thing. Everybody else has the same right.

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[countertrolling]

Where did I say they can't? However, now that you mention it, they must use it in an inoffensive manner, no contamination of the surrounding area allowed. What they are not allowed is exclusive access.

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[Golddess]

Provide a land granting rights for corporations

Like this guy?

Though I never took his business seriously (and still don't), he was the first reason I thought of for the "legal issues" surrounding moon mining.

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[medcalf]

But why not? What gives you the right to decide how they use that land? What is the basis of your claim?

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[countertrolling]

It's not their land. Putting a flag on it doesn't make it theirs, the 'might makes right' issue aside. They can use it how they want, up until they affect others, via contamination, etc. They have no right to deny access. They have no right to "landlock" people in or out. However, the acceptable compromise is the AC's response that the claims have sunset provisions. This would help minimize the speculation.

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[medcalf]

How do they make it their land? Or am I going to have to come back and ask why private property is such a bad thing? Why is speculation bad? Is it that speculation leads to development? Is it just because speculators can become rich if their speculations pay off?

Re:They can own what they extract and process

[countertrolling]

How do they make it their land?

They don't and they shouldn't be allowed to. I have repeatedly said they can use the resources. Private property grants exclusive use, or non use. It locks others that could benefit out. We pay high rent in the city because people sit on their empty property. We actually create scarcity to maximize profit and rent seeking. That is a bad thing. Where's the difficultly? Speculation is casino gambling. It produces nothing but inflation. However, speculation on what you produce might motivate you to produce it. Speculation on title to idle resources... well.. title shouldn't be given for idle resources. Nobody has any right to deny anybody access to raw materials.

we need a less fuel useing way to get there as the

[Joe The Dragon]

we need a less fuel useing way to get there as the oil costs are high to get the moon.

Moon Miners Manifesto:

[Hartree]

Maybe Peter Kokh and the rest of the Lunar Reclamation Society (www.moonsociety.org) will see their dream someday.

I last heard from them in the late 1980s.

I note they have a chapter in India now. At least people somewhere haven't given up the dream.

Re:Moon Miners Manifesto:

[Hartree]

Well, even Peter might admit they're lunatics.

But they're the right kind of lunatics. :)

International Campaign to Save the Dust!

[Hartree]

Yeah, I can hardly wait for all the posts about how the moon has such a delicate ecosystem.

We certainly must not disrupt a pristine environment like that.

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.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[zill]

Exactly. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[syousef]

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.

I'll say. Those people will need to be able to withstand -110 to 120 degrees celcius, and live in an environment with no air, no water, no life and cancer causing dust. Sounds damn tough to me!!! Only saving grace is moon gravity means they aren't strong.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[skine]

Or they can build heated structures filled with air and wear space suits when they go outside.

Did you think this would be some sort of camping expedition?

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[tmosley]

To be fair, any residents would, in fact, be homesteaders, and would by definition own the land that they claimed, worked, and defended. I don't know why people feel the need to rely on governments to tell us who owns space rocks. If you just declare that this or that person owns it, and the person who owns it never does anything about it, then the resource will never get exploited.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[locallyunscene]

And I've never read a story about cloning dinosaurs that didn't go horribly awry. Although if it didn't why would I read it?

I actually just read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" last week and while I enjoyed the book I don't consider it a very effective "how-to start a lunar libertarian revolution." It's a great story, but it also presupposes a great many things for the plot and motivations to work. Not the least of which being that humanity becomes Malthusian enough to require the space on the moon and that convicts/political dissidents from all over the world are sent up there to kill each other off. If we got to the point where a self sufficient lunar colony could stage a revolt I would call that a big win overall.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[Peeteriz]

Homesteaders got the land due to the Homestead Act granting them the right to be left alone. On the moon, however, the benefits will belong to whoever can enforce their will locally by force - it likely won't be earth governments (since it's hard to climb the gravity well to punish 'colonies'), but I'd bet that it most likely will not be the hardworking grunts either - some power structure will easily control and exploit them.

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[syousef]

Or they can build heated structures filled with air and wear space suits when they go outside.

Did you think this would be some sort of camping expedition?

Woosh...glad we're on Earth so you can hear that joke fly right by

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[tmosley]

No, there were homesteaders for hundreds of years prior to the Homestead Act in America, and for thousands of years in the old world. Most people can't imagine this because their cultural memory only reaches back to the time just before their ancestors left a highly developed, corrupt state. This will be the first place settled by people with widespread access to weapons of equalization, from rifles to nukes. The United States came very close to this with muskets and single shot rifles, and was free for many years before it was captured by the banking interests in 1913.

Any attempt to create a power structure in a harsh environment like the moon will quickly lead to failure of the colony, much like it caused the failure of early English colonies in America. Freedom is the only factor that will allow the production of a capital base that will make life easy enough for a government to form. Given how crappy government services tend to be, do you really want to rely on a government air production monopoly?

Re:A Harsh Mistress

[Peeteriz]

If someone controls your air supply and your only way out, then you've got a de-facto strong goverment and you don't get a say in it, want it or not.
I'm 99% positive that anyone sending people to moon will ensure that these people get zero access to 'weapons of equalization'.

Re:Just what we need...

[flaming error]

Sounds good to me. Let's send them all there.

So what is there of value to mine?

[amanicdroid]

Please tell me there's a plutonium core with a thin, dusty crust floating on top.

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[amanicdroid]

FTFA: "helium 2 and rare Earth elements"

woo..
gonna need some specifics before I get behind this project.

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[steeleyeball]

Helium 3 is so much better than Plutonium it's not funny. You get normal Helium and protons and of course gamma rays from the fusion reaction. Besides Plutonium is for making bombs, Thorium is what you want if you want safer fission power.

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[R3d M3rcury]

The concept isn't necessarily that there's stuff up there and that's incredibly valuable (say, unobtainium). It's also that there's more common ores that are not stuck at the bottom of a deep gravity well.

The general idea is to build big spaceships in Earth orbit. But the raw materials still have to come from Earth, which means they're going to be expensive to get up into orbit (assuming you use rockets to get them up there). But you can get the same raw materials from the Moon, it's much less expensive to get them from the Moon to the Earth than it is to bring them up from the Earth.

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[Kitkoan]

You are aware of things like JET? While it is still experimental for more practical usage, it still has been able to successfully preform fusion reactions. Also, the hydrogen bomb is powered by nuclear fusion.

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[c0lo]

Except for the little fact that we have NO FUSION POWER technology, you are right! But since when did reality and practical engineering ever get in the way of Space Nutters?

You know, anti-matter is even more betterer than Helium 3 it's not funny. See? It's easy to write childish and delusional things down. Now go do it.

Hang on, mate: Helium 2 is the the besterest way to go

If pooling He-2 in quantities large enough, the strong interaction anomaly (which makes possible the very existence of Helium-2) adds up and will act as a catalyst for creating anti-matter! How can you not see it?

No, no, no, naw.... don't come to me with the BS that He-2 doesn't exists: for sure the enterpreneurs already looking to getting a slice of the Moon aren't that stupid to throw the money of others in pointless ventures, they are endorsed by no other than Mark Whittington on the prestigious Yahoo news site, just RTFA!!

Besides to suggest otherwise it will be not only un-patriotic and possible qualify you as a terrorist: this venture not only will create huge commercial benefits but will also "be as much commercial as scientific and a desire to enhance national prestige and security".
Now, be a good guy and chip-in some of your income for the guys that will go and collect He-2, will ya?

Re:So what is there of value to mine?

[M. Baranczak]

Printer ink.

Re:Just what we need...

[ae1294]

Sounds good to me. Let's send them all there.

O2 sold separately..

Fusion!

[steeleyeball]

1) never clone somebody without their permission. 2) Aneutronic helium 3 Fusion... Sweet...

Sam Rockwell better run

[SlappyBastard]

His life is about to get a lot weird on the . . . Moon.

purpose?; humans vs robots

[bcrowell]

There are two completely orthogonal ideas being discussed in these articles: (1) Send humans to the moon again, and help them to survive and return, all at a more reasonable price, by extracting drinking water and rocket fuel (hydrogen and oxygen) from lunar ice. (2) Extract water from the moon and bring it down to low earth orbit for sale as a commodity (rocket fuel).

#1 raises the question of why it would be valuable to send humans to the moon again. The author of the airspacemag.com article says that we should do this as a warm-up for colonizing other planets in the solar system, and it should be done by the US federal government using tax money. This seems foolish to me. The other planets of the solar system are not good real estate, and there needs to be a clear justification for why humans should colonize space at all. If the justification is profit, then the US federal government doesn't need to fund it with tax money. If the motivation is the Larry Niven quip that "the dinosaurs didn't have a space program," then it's not at all clear that moon-then-Mars is the best way to go, and if we want to find out the best way to go, flying nationalistic propaganda missions for the US is not the best way to do it. The best way to go may be, for example, a space station orbiting Europa. We just don't know right now.

#2 is very sensible for any for-profit entity that can find a customer at low earth orbit willing to buy rocket fuel. But: (a) #2 doesn't require sending humans to the moon at all, and (b) this raises the question of who the LEO customers are, why they are there, and why they want to buy rocket fuel. Presently, the only prospective customers are the US and Russia, who keep humans in LEO for nationalistic propaganda purposes, and who might want to buy some drinking water; I doubt that that type of demand is sufficient to justify lunar mining. In the near future, we may have space tourists in orbit, but again it's not clear that they need *that* much drinking water. Uncrewed space probes going to the outer solar system could use rocket fuel, but I doubt that they need *that* much rocket fuel. So really the only reasonable customer would be someone who wants to send very large payloads to someplace like Mars, and this simply leads us back to the same issue, which is that the justification for sending humans to Mars is extremely weak for the foreseeable future.

Re:purpose?; humans vs robots

[VortexCortex]

This seems foolish to me. The other planets of the solar system are not good real estate, and there needs to be a clear justification for why humans should colonize space at all. If the justification is profit, then the US federal government doesn't need to fund it with tax money. If the motivation is the Larry Niven quip that "the dinosaurs didn't have a space program," then it's not at all clear that moon-then-Mars is the best way to go, and if we want to find out the best way to go, flying nationalistic propaganda missions for the US is not the best way to do it. The best way to go may be, for example, a space station orbiting Europa. We just don't know right now.

I think it's foolish to think that we will ever find out "the best way" to distribute humanity (to prevent Human extinction) if we never try to experimentally and/or temporarily populate our closest celestial bodies.

If we wait until "the best" procedure is theoretically proposed we still won't know for sure until we try -- Better to try a bit now with what we have in order to advance the science of extra-planetary habitation and accelerate the discovery of the optimal procedure than to only day-dream until we're all extinct.

The journey of a thousand light-years must begin with a single plank length.

Re:purpose?; humans vs robots

[bcrowell]

I think it's foolish to think that we will ever find out "the best way" to distribute humanity (to prevent Human extinction) if we never try to experimentally and/or temporarily populate our closest celestial bodies.

If we wait until "the best" procedure is theoretically proposed we still won't know for sure until we try -- Better to try a bit now with what we have in order to advance the science of extra-planetary habitation and accelerate the discovery of the optimal procedure than to only day-dream until we're all extinct.

The journey of a thousand light-years must begin with a single plank length.

I never said anything about *never* trying. I just don't think there is any reasonable justification *today* for space colonization, in the sense of making self-supporting colonies. Actually the obvious next step is LEO space hotels for tourists. That will almost certainly happen without government spending. There's nothing wrong with the "try a bit now" philosophy, and space hotels would fall in that category. But there is something wrong with spending billions of dollars of US tax money, year after year, on completely pointless national propaganda/porkbarrel projects like the shuttle (whose only mission was to get to the ISS) and the ISS (whose only mission was to give the shuttle someplace to go).

Haha, lawyers. . .

[mosb1000]

It's not clear that you'd own what you dig up? Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[winwar]

"Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance."

Lawyers. And governments (lawyers and weapons). Unless you were planning to never return to Earth or near Earth orbit. And if you don't need to do that, then the lawyers and the governments (with lawyers and weapons) can also come to you. Sure, nobody may stop you from getting it and using it but they sure as heck can separate you from the profit.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[z0idberg]

Which would work if it's an American company. What would happen if it's China (or even India) that is doing the mining? I can't see the USA invading either country waving lawsuits around.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[jmorris42]

> And if you don't need to do that, then the lawyers and the governments
> (with lawyers and weapons) can also come to you.

Actually, no. If you are mining lunar resources in sufficient quantity to be economically viable and delivering them to earth orbit you, by definition, are in possession of sufficient tech with direct military application that you could tell the earthers to self procreate. Do the math. Instead of delivering a ton of water into low earth orbit you could just drop a ton of rock on the Pentagon or the UN building. BLAM! Foe dies instantly, no saving throw allowed. Do the math, that ordinary rock would have a hell of a lot of kinetic energy coming straight down the gravity well of the Earth-Moon system. And with a mass driver as launcher you could repeat as often as needed until the lesson sunk in. Reread The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you aren't clear on this point.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[c0lo]

> And if you don't need to do that, then the lawyers and the governments > (with lawyers and weapons) can also come to you.

Actually, no. If you are mining lunar resources in sufficient quantity to be economically viable and delivering them to earth orbit you, by definition, are in possession of sufficient tech with direct military application that you could tell the earthers to self procreate.

False... you'll need to be more than "economy viable" to do it, you'd need to be self-sufficient.
There's no "economic viable" in destroying your very supply of anything else you cannot produce. An believe me, the "earthians" will be able to survive even in the stone age, on the moon surface... good luck with that. Read again that harsh-mistress you mention.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[jmorris42]

> False... you'll need to be more than "economy viable" to do it,
> you'd need to be self-sufficient.

Considering the cost of lofting anything with more mass than a microchip, any moon colony that would be big enough to attract the lawyers would pretty much have to be self sufficient. Moon back to Earth is cheap, especially once you have a mass driver. Earth to Moon is expensive and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Hell, Earth to LEO is likely to be the limiting expense on most space activity until we find something better than chemical propulsion.

And if push came to shove, I suspect any moon colony would be able to manage simple chip fabrication if it became a matter of survival, especially since wafer production (for solar cells) would probably be one of the first things to get set up. The big problem would be obtaining raw elements that aren't available on the moon.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[currently_awake]

The UN is not a government, it's an old boys club where governments talk about stuff. If you are on the moon it's yours (what you control, anyway). The only time the UN enters the picture is if you need help/supplies from a country on earth that is a UN member and signed the silly treaty.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[khallow]

Do the math. Instead of delivering a ton of water into low earth orbit you could just drop a ton of rock on the Pentagon or the UN building. BLAM! Foe dies instantly, no saving throw allowed. Do the math, that ordinary rock would have a hell of a lot of kinetic energy coming straight down the gravity well of the Earth-Moon system. And with a mass driver as launcher you could repeat as often as needed until the lesson sunk in. Reread The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if you aren't clear on this point.

Three days. That's roughly how long till your foe "dies instantly". With that kind of delay, your foe, especially one that can send stuff back at you, will have plenty of time to retaliate, much less get out of the way of the falling rock. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would have turned out a lot different, if the lunarians couldn't hide their mass driver. Given that Earth is chock full of people who know how to find and kill buried stuff like mass drivers, I don't buy the scenario.

Re:Haha, lawyers. . .

[mosb1000]

how would they even know? and where would they sue you? in space court?

Zero sum game, anyone?

[Hartree]

You seem to be worried that there isn't enough pie to go around.

Maybe part of the solution is to make more pie.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[flaming error]

And if we don't have enough people to make all that pie, maybe part of the solution is to make more people?

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[c0lo]

You seem to be worried that there isn't enough pie to go around.

Maybe part of the solution is to make more pie.

Why for? There's an easier solution to this:
1. blow hot air under the pie crust (like, create derivatives for the pie)
2. sell the hot air to the dumb-witted. No worries, there will be many to buy, the sum of intelligence on the planet is constant, the population growing is an advantage.
3. make sure you don't get fooled by your own hot air or have some governments ready to bail you
4. profit

Sounds familiar?

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[jmorris42]

> Sounds familiar?

Yea. And it doesn't work, unlike Capitalism which actually creates wealth. Our current economic difficulties are the result of a mixed economy, one where profit is capitalist and loss is socialist, one where government intervention in the economy is so extreme in some areas it is hard to call it a market with a straight face. And yes one where corporations are too powerful. But guess what a corporation is? A GOVERNMENT created psuedo entity.

The problem corporations create is a loss of responsibility. Some capitalist creates a great company, it goes IPO and becomes a corporation. The founder is run off or eventually retires and then what happens? Some snot nosed Harvard MBA steeped in Marxist theory is given control over a few billion dollars of economic resources. He then sets out to be 'socially responsible' so as to get invited to the right parties, have glowing cover shoots on the fashionable industry publications and satisfy the snot nose Yale Marxist MBA running the mutual fund he needs to convince to buy into the new stock issue coming up. Then when things go horribly wrong (how could that possibly happen with the smart people in charge?) they ask the government to bail their sorry asses out... and save the pension fund for the union that the corporation and the union goons have been shamelessly raiding for decades.

Which is a big part of the attraction of building a moonbase. The deluded dream that if we could just get off this rock we could start over and do it better the next time. As if. Who would be building that moonbase? And the UN has already laid claim to every inch inside and out of every celesital body so forget staking a claim and living that pioneer lifestyle.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[c0lo]

Yeap.... uhu.

I still don't get your opinion in regards with the corporations:
1. are they a good thing - because they are pretty synonymous in the current stage of capitalism, them being the enitities that create most of the wealth; *or*
2. are they a baaad thing - being in existence because the blessing of a governmen. (no, they are not created by the govt, they are created by the money everybody in the capitalistic world put in - if you have a private retirement plan, you are contributing to their existence every pay-check at least).

The above aside, you will be probably excited by another article of the same author: let's privatize the government, start leasing the moon and reap the benefits. Two out-of-the-box solutions offered by the same author (I can guarantee he's not of the nosy MBA graduates, he's only an BA in history). My only problem: he's offering these solutions fro free - which gets me thinking: "Hang on, that's not capitalistic. These ideas will surely create wealth, how dare him offering them for free? Isn't this rather Marx-istic?"

Granted, I can't say these solutions are "hot-air" given the moon has no atmosphere, but they do have a merit: with the govts being privatized, there's no reason for UN to exist anymore, thus every inch on the Moon claimed by UN will be reverted to the ownership of corporations (again: are they good? are they bad?).

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[Hartree]

I somehow doubt it will take that many more people to raise living standards in many places.

Example: China. You have a society that is modernizing at a rapid rate. The problem isn't a lack of people, it's a lack of uniform progress in that. The urban east is much farther along than the western part of the country. In fact, they have a program called Go West to try to deal with this.

Another: India. It's dealing with many of the same problems.

Go try to tell people in either of those countries that they somehow don't deserve a higher standard of living just because it would make the world resource load easier. I imagine they'd bust a gut laughing at you.

I sure haven't seen the US rushing to implement major limits on growth. Nor the EU. In fact, they're been positively frantic the past 3 years that there wasn't enough growth with the world downturn.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[Hartree]

Yes it does.

It has downsides, though.

They're called things like: The Great Depression. The Dot Com Bubble. The Housing Bubble. Lather. Rinse, forget the well known standards of stable investing and corporate governance. Repeat ad nauseum.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[jmorris42]

> are they a good thing - because they are pretty synonymous
> in the current stage of capitalism,

Which is the problem. In a properly designed society freedom and responsibility are in balance as is authority and responsibility. The modern corporation breaks that rule. The shareholders are only liable for their investment, regardless what the corporation does. The CEO, unless he gets caught personally tossing puppies in a wood chipper or something, can only be fired (with the golden parachute of course left intact) even if he drives the corporation into oblivion, creates a dozen SuperFund sites, whatever. None of the Board of Directors will be held personally liable for pretty much anything the corporation does.

Yes the modern corporation also offers advantages in mobility of capital, etc. But I propose many of those advantages could be retained if we moved back to partnerships and private companies and even corporations that aren't publicly traded. Bonds can always be sold to raise capital without blurring the lines of accountability like corporations do.

Just look at the recent banking mess. People did things they knew were stupid because they also knew they would have their bonus banked when it blew up and they would still have a job. Back when those big Wall Street houses were founded they were partnerships and the owners would have been left destitute in a fiasco like the current one. So they didn't make stupid investments very often, it was their money they were playing with, not "The Corporation's".

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[c0lo]

Yes it does.

It has downsides, though.

They're called things like: The Great Depression. The Dot Com Bubble. The Housing Bubble.

That's were point 3 kicks in. The guys that won;t do it... well... to bad, it is called "economical darwinism" for a reason.

Lather. Rinse, forget the well known standards of stable investing and corporate governance. Repeat ad nauseum.

Even better... a renewable resourse... profit at every boom-bust cycle. At least, as long as you can find other dim-witts to GS-scam.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[Hartree]

Well, if we're doing reduction to absurdity, then by that reasoning it was futile to hunt and gather in groups rather than individually as we'd just outbreed the increase in food availability it led to.

Ditto for agriculture.

Sorry. Don't buy it. The simplistic version of Malthus just doesn't hold well in the real world.

Minecraft? *snerk* Never played. I was more into Empire on the Plato system or Master of Orion.

Though I must admit, the ALU done in fire that someone did in Minecraft was rather impressive.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[flaming error]

The American money supply is basically equal to it's federal debt, currently around 13 trillion dollars. As the government borrows more money the money supply expands, the actual definition of "inflation."

What the media usually calls "inflation," though, is a general rise in prices. That phenomenon happens when our economic growth does not keep up with our money supply growth.

So prices stay under nominal control as long as economic growth keeps pace with money supply growth.

Now if you google for charts of the federal debt you will see that it grows exponentially, and we're in the part of the curve that goes virtually straight up, with no physical boundary to how high it can go.

In order for prices to stay down, we need to have economic growth continue to grow exponentially (straight up). In order to do this, we need unlimited resources and unlimited growth in the population of producers and consumers.

If you don't bake enough pies to keep an exponentially-growing money supply busy, we get "hyper-inflation" and consumers have to take wheelbarrows full of money to buy their pie.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[Hartree]

But, if you take your assumptions, it doesn't matter if you have a decreasing population as long as that population is significantly greater than zero. The debt will still outstrip and require infinite growth to keep up.

Thus, your situation is hopeless. More pie or no, more people or fewer.

So, sell your paper investments now while they're still worth something and buy $1400 an ounce gold. I'll be happy to sell you lots of it. So what if I get a $30/ounce profit. By your reasoning I'll still just hold worthless ultimately overinflated paper. You'll snicker as I go broke in buying power.

And then I'll use the profit to buy good dollar denominated paper investments. Who do you think will turn out better in the long run, hmmm?

Odd thing. I've yet to see a hyperinflation that has persisted for decades on end. Italy kinda tried. Several South American countries were in the running in the 70s. Zimbabwe is currently trying. But no luck thus far. Something else always happens. Change in government. Default and repudiation. A revaluing deal, a turn around in the economy, etc, etc.

This is why in physics classes they note that following curves in models into the range they no longer apply is a bad idea.

Naive Malthusianism is similar.

Re:Zero sum game, anyone?

[flaming error]

> Thus, your situation is hopeless.
The way I'd put it is "unsustainable."

> Who do you think will turn out better
> in the long run, hmmm?
Probably you will. Congratulations in advance.

My reply was meant to address your statement that "I somehow doubt it will take that many more people to raise living standards in many places".

It takes increasing numbers of people to sustain exponential growth. Fractional Reserve economies are a race between the population and the debt.

Populations are constrained by resources. Debt has no physical constraints.

If we learn to exploit places beyond Earth, we can postpone our day of reckoning, and spoil exotic new ecosystems to boot.

But the day of reckoning will come - exponential growth can't continue forever in a finite universe.

Re:The Prospects For Lunar Mining

[mosb1000]

I think the idea is that if you dig up water on the moon, you can electrolyze it and use it as rocket propellant to get you to other locations (like mars, or wherever) less expensively than launching from the earth. Here is a nifty depiction of the potential benefit.

Re:legal issues?

[Skidborg]

You don't see us worrying about messing up orbits and falling into the sun when we do mining here on earth, do you?

Re:Interest has arisen

[turbidostato]

"There's no magnetosphere around the Moon. It's not healthy for humans to hang out there for too long. How are you going to justify shielding humans to work as miners"

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that they talk about robotic resource extraction?

"when it's one of the most unglamorous, unskilled and low-paid jobs on Earth"

What Earth are you talking about? Minering might be unglamorous but you can bet it's neither unskilled nor low-paid. And if we talk about minery on challenging conditions (i.e.: oil platform workers) even less so.

"Machines? We don't have the technology for fully automated mining. There is a vacuum on the Moon, vacuum cementing means that every single machine and lubricant needs to be re-thought."

Well, that's your bet. *If* (and I won't go here if that's a big or a little "if" now) there's the chance to make a profit, you'll see the technology growing up (there's nothing inherently impossible in fully automate, or let them go some workers to watch out, or monitoring/operating from Earth).

"STAR TREK WAS NOT A REALITY SHOW."

Luckily enough this time won't be like the last one. As long as it is a private endevour you'll be absolutly free to risk your money on it or not.

Re:The Prospects For Lunar Mining

[turbidostato]

"Wtf do they expect to find gold, diamonds, platinum?"

I would certainly expect to find Selenium, of course.

All this means...

[rally2xs]

... is that Russia or India or Japan or anyone-but-the-USA that doesn't respect a bunch of bogus regulations that are designed to work to the disadvantage of the USA in the 1st place will be doing the mining, and we'll have to IMPORT the expensive, outer-space minerals that we should have been mining in the 1st place.

(dreaming of) Running before learning to walk...

[AfroTrance]

We don't even have a moon base. And building a moon base, purely to mine on the moon, is stupid. There is enough minerals down here (currently). The only way it would be worthwhile, is if we worked out fusion power and if helium-3 was far (far far) superior to anything on Earth for fusion.

IEEE article on mining the moon

[buybuydandavis]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mining-the-moon

It looks like the idea is to mine the moon for materials to make fuel for space exploration.

Also, if we ever get fusion going, heavy isotopes of hydrogen and helium become possible targets.

Satellite construction as viable space industry

[dirkdodgers]

Building, deploying, and maintaining satellites in space, primarily from resources in space, is the best possibility I can think of as an industry that could be self sustaining and based in space while still providing the major economic benefit to the homeworld needed to bootstrap it. Sending satellites into space is so expensive today that valuable and potentially profitable services aren't mass market viable due to the cost of transporting people and things into space. Example: satellite phones. Imagine if there were a self-sustaining space-based satellite industry. In 100 years our descedents could be born in an asteroid-based, moon-based, or space-based sattelite complex colony.

We should start building up space-based industrial capacity from what's already available in space, which means rebuilding nearly from scratch. We should treat it as a variation on the sci fi theme "how would we rebuild modern industrial capacity in a post-apocolytic world after a massive depopulation event?" It needs to become self sustaining.

We should mine the moon and asteroids for raw materials, and build from there. I mean from the basics. Let's start by mapping out the asteroid belt exhaustively and identifying sources for all of the materials we need. We need to smelt ore in space. We need to start large scale biomass creation and harvesting in space. Because right now the moon is the most accessible source of water we know of in space, the moon is a critical early component of this.

Given the choice between establishing a foothold of the human race off of Earth, and eliminating poverty or cancer, give me space any day.

Consequence of lunar mining

[Vision Boards]

I wonder why people need to go to the moon just to mine. Yes, there are benefits about lunar mining. But, have you ever thought of possibly sparking another WORLD WAR? Wars have always been waged because of money and power. Now, that ownership of a country has been established, your bringing war in outer space... I don't know... But, the effort of lunar mining and its consequences are not a scene to behold... ~Vision Boards

Re:Consequence of lunar mining

[khallow]

I wonder why people need to go to the moon just to mine. Yes, there are benefits about lunar mining. But, have you ever thought of possibly sparking another WORLD WAR? Wars have always been waged because of money and power. Now, that ownership of a country has been established, your bringing war in outer space... I don't know... But, the effort of lunar mining and its consequences are not a scene to behold...

Because it beats mining out your neighborhood? And you don't have to look. You can shed a single perfect tear for the savage rape of the pristine lunar environment and then go back to sticking your head in the sand. Finally, any war involving the moon would be a cislunar war and hence, ten times as awesome as a mere world war.

Hope would it be done?

[amightywind]

What would such a water mining operation look like? It seems like you will have to process a huge volume of regolith to extract a small amount of water, in effect, strip mining! If the government won't allow it on a West Virginia mountaintop, what makes anyone think they would encourage it on the moon where footprints are permanent?

Re:Hope would it be done?

[amightywind]

I am just highlighting the argument of the eco-leftists, and the fact that you don't understand the issue clearly. Mining the moon would cause the same uproar as strip mining Antarctica.

Re:Hope would it be done?

[khallow]

Mining the moon would cause the same uproar as strip mining Antarctica.

You do have a point. I suspect however that we're not very far from "strip mining" Antarctica. The countries of the old western world aren't the only parties that can engage in that sort of activity.

Super-clear bottled water from fresh lunar springs

[noidentity]

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.

I can see it now, bottled water that's fresh from a lunar spring, only $1K/bottle. I'm writing a business plan now.

Moonstalk

[MrKaos]

What better way to find a use for a Moonstalk, the lunar equivalent of a terrestrial Space Elevator. If the materials are available to do such a thing now then mining the moon may finally provide the commercial impetus to get into space. A Moonstalk would certainly remove the need for launchers from the moon to get the material into space.

Re:Moonstalk

[VortexCortex]

What better way to find a use for a Moonstalk, the lunar equivalent of a terrestrial Space Elevator...

Awe damn-it, When I heard Moonstalk I thought it would involve Rockin' out for days on end and wallowing in peace and free-love with the Lunarians -- Like a Lunar Woodstock.

Re:Moonstalk

[MrKaos]

When I heard Moonstalk I thought it would involve Rockin' out for days on end and wallowing in peace and free-love with the Lunarians -- Like a Lunar Woodstock.

Maybe the Police could be coaxed out of retirement yet again for one more final rendition of 'Stalking on the moon'

Re:The Prospects For Lunar Mining

[c0lo]

mmmmmmmmmm moon powder.

Wtf do they expect to find gold, diamonds, platinum?

No, buddy, just RTFA. Le'me quote for you:

The presence of lunar water, as well as other potentially lucrative resources such as helium 2 and rare Earth elements, might spur a new race to the Moon that would dwarf the previous one. The inspiration will be as much commercial as scientific and a desire to enhance national prestige and security.

I took the liberty of emphasising some words in the quote above... I'm totally shaken, almost crying of shame... how could I not see it!! Not contributing with at least my next year's salary to this commercial venture is un-patriotic and on the fringe of qualifying me as a terrorist!

Quick, lets follow the suggestion of the same author (the gianterest mind in the all the worlds... not even recognized enough: only a BA in history??! You gotta be kidd'n' me, right?)... as Ah was sayin' lets privatize the government, start leasing the moon and rip them profits!!!... nothing easier to get out from this economic crisis... wha' the hell are we waiting for?

Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream...

[zawarski]

"I'm gonna build a spaceship, go to the moon, salvage all the junk that's up there, bring it back and sell it." So he put together a team. An ex-astronaut...a fuel expert...they built a rocketship... And they went to the moon. Who knows what they'll do next? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1

Helium3

[sanman2]

"There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon"

Helium-3 could be worth it, if mankind is able to harness fusion for power production. At least it's aneutronic and the Coulomb barrier isn't as high as with Boron.

Re:Helium3

[morgauxo]

You realize that even if we had a constant supply of He3 on tap today we still couldn't use it right? In theory it might be possible to achieve fusion power using it. We aren't there yet. If we do ever get there then lunar He3 might well be worth it but we do have small supplies on Earth we can use to experiment with in the meantime.

Re:Helium3

[Teancum]

You do realize that there are industrial and scientific applications for He-3 besides nuclear fusion?

Re:Helium3

[FatLittleMonkey]

There is no Helium-3 fusion. Therefore you are limited to existing markets.

As near as I can find, the price of He3 is $4M/kg, and the size of the commercial market is at or below 100kg. So your maximum gross income is $400M for 100kg delivery. That means you need to do, not just a sample-return, but also the mining and separation, for the price of a small probe.

Worse, the moment you drop 100kg onto the commercial market, there will be a sharp price drop, so you won't get $400M anyway.

Worser still, the main use of He3 today is in nuclear weapons. So expect severe restrictions on who you can sell to.

Re:Helium3

[arisvega]

.. and the Coulomb barrier isn't as high as with Boron.

Besides, nobody ever likes molten Boron.

Re:Helium3

[arisvega]

Worse, the moment you drop 100kg onto the commercial market, there will be a sharp price drop, so you won't get $400M anyway.

Not if you're the only dude dropping it into the market- you would want to drop the price a bit to get competitive, but your clients are buying anyway. I can't see a reason for a 'sharp' drop (unless the market floods with cheap, Chinese Helium-3)- and there is always price-fixing.

Plus, I don't see where you get that there is no Helium-3 fusion. The internet says otherwise- granted, it is just for research, but that's what all fusion nowadays is about, until a plant gets built that the energy output is more than the input and we can charge batteries "for free" or scale it down or whatever.

Re:Helium3

[FatLittleMonkey]

I can't see a reason for a 'sharp' drop

The total global stockpile of He3 (most of which is used in nuclear weapons) is a few hundred kilograms. The commercial market is... small.

You'd be dropping an amount equivalent to several decades supply, all in one hit. Either you drop the price hard, or the market does not expand enough to absorb your supply and you have it sitting in a cylinder not earning money. (So you're not paying your debt/investors. So they would never lend/invest in the first place, because your business plan fails.)

But even at a full $4M/kg, you must spend less than $400M (per 100kg) in order to break even. But a small lunar lander would cost $200M for the launch alone. Leaving you $200M for the entire hardware platform (which includes equipment necessary to extract and concentrate a very very low level resource.)

To profit enough to make the venture worthwhile in its own right, you probably have to halve the costs to $200M. Which you can't. So until launch costs are much less, and hardware costs are much less, the whole idea is just pointless.

Re: Fusion.

As others have said, D/T fusion is easier than He3. The advantage of He3 fusion isn't that it's easy, it's that it's "Clean".

So if we crack self-sustaining He3 fusion, we'll already have D/T fusion. And He3 is the "ash" produced by D/T fusion. So by the time He3 fusion is practical, we'll already have an abundant Earth-based source.

There are reasons for going to the moon, He3 is not one of them. Anyone who talks about He3 is either ignorant, or lying to you to get funding.

Re:Helium3

[arisvega]

There are reasons for going to the moon, He3 is not one of them. Anyone who talks about He3 is either ignorant, or lying to you to get funding.

I guess I was naive in deriving the economics- I can see now how the maximum 3He price will definitely be constrained.

As others have said, D/T fusion is easier than He3. The advantage of He3 fusion isn't that it's easy, it's that it's "Clean".

I assume by 'clean' you are referring to the comparatively low high-energy neutron 'waste'?

So if we crack self-sustaining He3 fusion, we'll already have D/T fusion.

I can't see why (but I'm no fusion expert) -I mean, isn't 3He fusion suppose to be 'easier to handle' because of the lower temperatures? What is the connection here that makes you assume that if we can fuse 3He, we will be already able to extract fusion energy from other reactions?

Re:Helium3

[morgauxo]

Enough to merit lunar mining and all the expense, complications and risk involved? I'd love to see this or anything motivate people enough to result in a lunar colony but the only way I see He3 being it is if someone demonstrates that they can make a fusion reactor work with a net gain of energy first. Then there will be a scramble to go get it.

Re:Helium3

[Coren22]

But H3 doesn't come from moon mining, only from ice mining. It is only used in Amarrian ships and POS though.

Re:Helium3

[Teancum]

On a small scale? Yes, I do think there is some merit to mining lunar soil to extract He3 as a way to jump start a Lunar colony. It wouldn't be useful in terms of a massive processing facility like was sort of depicted on the movie "Avatar" by James Cameron in terms of an extra-terrestrial mining facility with trillions of dollars invested, but spending several million dollars on a small scale to "prove" the viability of extracting He-3 would certainly be of some benefit.

The best practical application of He-3 at the moment is as a refrigerant for very cold cryogenics, as He-3 has the lowest boiling point for any known substance... even lower than He-4. That counts for a whole lot and if you are dealing with temperatures just a degree or two above absolute zero, every little bit helps a whole lot. Paying $100k/kg or more is certainly something worth doing in that application.

Re:Helium3

[morgauxo]

On a small scale we already have He-3 collected from decaying nuclear warheads and already do use it for experiments. For several million dollars you wouldn't even need He-3, at that price point even space tourism becomes viable albeit only available to the richest 1% or so. Since when could we do anything on the moon for only several million dollars? I think you've misplaced a decimal point.

Re:Helium3

[Teancum]

I don't think I've misplaced a decimal point here. All I'm saying is that if anything is going to the Moon that spending a couple million dollars as a side project to demonstrate He-3 extraction would certainly be worth the effort. That would be a small rover that could be tele-operated from the Earth which could do some prospecting/demonstration extraction.

BTW, I think you also misplace the quantity that is being extracted currently from nuclear warheads and other nuclear projects at the moment. Yes, there are some sources for this particular isotope, but it is still valuable and has other applications if it were available in volume that currently aren't available right now.

There are several groups with the Google Lunar X-Prize that are going to the Moon who are planning on spending just a couple million dollars for the effort to get there, and the cost of spaceflight on the whole has been dropping more than you realize. I'm not saying that it is cheap, but certainly a trip to the Moon doesn't require billions except in the bloated cost-plus government contracts that aren't really trying to be cost-effective anyway.

Oh yeah, there is an effort by Space Adventures to go to the Moon with some space tourists. I give it less than a decade before Apollo 8 is duplicated with private spacecraft, but I'll leave that to your wild imaginations as to if that seems a little too fantastic.

Re:Just what we need...

[Grishnakh]

No, I think we should send them to Venus instead.

Re:lunar mass

[khallow]

the issue i see with a large scale mining of the moon (and shooting it into space), is what will happen with us changing the mass of the moon? I get that it's huge and we would only take a few % off it, but let's never say never here and consider in 100 years if we removed 1% of the moons mass, would this affect processes on earth?

Moving 1% of the Moon's mass in a century is equivalent to moving the entire mass of Earth somewhere else in less than a million years. I'm not sure how turning the entire Earth into human stuff would effect processes on Earth, but use your imagination. In other words, it's no longer relevant what processes are doing on Earth by the time someone has that kind of mass flow going on.

Drill baby drill...

[flyingfsck]

The moon is still warm inside, so if one would drill a deep enough hole, one would probably find water, oil and gas, same as on earth.

Capitalism in space?

[dugeen]

No doubt in 1350 keen feudalists were looking forward with equal enthusiasm to the allocation by the King of the first lunar demesnes.

Re:Abundant water?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

yes. People tend to forget we live on water world. But we also don't *consume* that much water... we "use" it and its quite possible to recycle it a much higher level than we do now. There just any reason to do so on earth. Well not much. The same cannot be said for space/moon "cities".

no single thing!

[HarryatRock]

Correct, there are many things worth shipping, but you have to consider the destination, and you seem only to be considering raw materials. The moon may be a better (i.e. cheaper) place to refine materials or even to manufacture finished products. Think high grade vacuum, low temperatures, and low gravity and ability to use processes which would be impractical or dangerous on earth. I can think of vacuum stills producing very pure metals, and crystal growth cells for advanced materials as potential money spinners. Then of course we have the whole gamut of bio manufacturing. The risk of GM "escapes" would be greatly reduced, and of course the (presumed) absence of local objectors would reduce security costs (unless the Vegans arrive).
Seriously though., The early trips to the "New World" looked just as economically daft, and some failed, but think what a share in "Pilgram Fathers Inc" is worth today.

Would that change Earth mass?

[lskbr]

How that would impact life on Earth? I mean, the mass of Earth is almost constant (no huge variations)... but what would happen to our orbit if we start to bring massive amounts of minerals and other stuff from the Moon? As the orbit is related to mass... changing the mass of Earth and Moon would change something, no?

I guess it's true

[ThatsNotPudding]

The Moon Shall Rise Again.

Re:we need a less fuel useing way to get there as

[AmiMoJo]

Space elevator to orbit and then a solar sail to the moon. Doesn't need to be fast and once set up costs almost zero energy (elevator regenerates power when descending, solar sail is obviously solar powered).

Really?

[hesaigo999ca]

I can't imagine how good things are going to go, if we are already trying to use up all of another orbiting planet/moon's resources even before we have been able to populate it....wow, making holes in it all over the place...no wonder people think of the moon as swiss cheese....it will become exactly that!

Can we use it all up?

[morgauxo]

There are a lot of people excited about the prospect of using Lunar water to make rocket fuel to explore Mars and beyond. How much water is really there though? Headlines make it seem that there is a lot because there really is a lot compared to what we just recently thought was there but it's still very dry compared to Earth. If lunar water is used for rocket fuel will it be available for colonization? Would using it this way be shooting ourselves in the foot?

Political issues?

[Lisandro]

Do we have anything even close to laws regarding explotation of Moon resources? This could be a major issue in the future; once someone starts mining the moon i guess others would follow...

That's no moon...

[DarthVain]

Oh wait... yes it is.

Also for extra geek cred, if the Klingons have taught us nothing it is nothing bad can ever happen from mining from your moon, particularly for highly volatile fuel for spaceships!

I also get to piss off all hardcores by mentioning Star Trek and Starwars in the same breath!

You can never find a grammar Nazi when you need to

[orichter]

I must of course post explaining to you that you have misused two and in fact you meant to use the word too. Then someone needs to come along behind me and post .....

Woosh!

It's like you people aren't even trying any more :)