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The Prospects For Lunar Mining

Posted by Soulskill on from the peak-green-cheese dept.

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."

16 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Save on supervisory staff by WormholeFiend · · Score: 4, Funny

    by using clones!

    1. Re:Save on supervisory staff by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Funny

      by using clones!

      No, clones are people two!

  2. Easy Legal Fix. by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please direct all complaints to:

    Luna Mining Company
    1 Moon Drive
    Moon

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    ---
    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  3. Energy requirements? by bigsexyjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
    1. Re:Energy requirements? by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?)

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      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    2. Re:Energy requirements? by painandgreed · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Energy requirements? by pspahn · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    4. Re:Energy requirements? by moteyalpha · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Energy requirements? by aquila.solo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Energy requirements? by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  4. Re:Regolith? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. A Harsh Mistress by Nethead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  6. Re:So what is there of value to mine? by amanicdroid · · Score: 4, Informative

    FTFA: "helium 2 and rare Earth elements"

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

  7. Re:Yeah let's do it! by The+Mighty+Buzzard · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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    Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
  8. Re:Regolith? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  9. Re:Regolith? by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 3, Informative

    For others who didn't know about that discovery:

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

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    "Lame" - Galaxar