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Former Senator Wants to Mine The Moon
MarkWhittington writes "Harrison Schmitt, Apollo Moonwalker, geologist, and former United States Senator, recently presented a plan to solve the world's long term energy problems by developing fusion power fueled with helium-3 mined from the Moon. He presented this plan in a speech at Williston Basin Petroleum Conference."
We've known for ages that helium-3 is a good potential fusion fuel, and that mining the moon could be a good source of it. But we don't have fusion power plants yet, nor are we particularly close to getting them. So why talking about mining fuel that we're at least twenty years away from being able to use?
...
its impossible just like mars.
step 1: develop practical fusion power
step 2: redevelop lunar capable space program
but what's with the title of this story?
"Former Senator Wants to Mine the Moon"
Wouldn't it be more informative and important to mention, in the title, that he is one of the few people to actually walk on the moon?
Something like:
"Apollo Moonwalker Believes We Should Mine Moon"
Or, if you really want that Senator in there...
"Former Senator, having walked on the moon, now wants to mine it"
If we only had helium 3 we could easily have fusion and a limitless source of energy. Good thing that there are no other technical issues to resolve. So clearly we should take mining equipment to the moon, mine the helium 3 that might be there and then send it back to earth in huge rocket ships, no matter how much energy all of that expends. This message was brought to you by a former U.S. Senator, so you know there is no need to question the logic behind it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Coming from wikipedia, the volume of the moon is 2.1958x10^10 km, or 2.1958x10^13 m. A hole of 1.2x10^7 m will power one reactor for one year. Which means that mining the entirety of the moon for 1,829,833.33. So not bad at all.
...create a factory that spits out cloned sam rockwells to control the mining machinery and use kevin spacey's voice to keep him docile, pliant and producing helium-3?
This proposal might seem outlandish, but a global helium shortage is a very real problem that we're going to have to deal with soon. Many, many industries rely on helium, and the price is artificially low since the government is trying to sell off its reserves by 2015. Aside from fusion (or somehow mining the sun), there's really no way to get new helium (it's a noble gas, there are no naturally occurring helium compounds).
We'll only need one man for the job.
Imagine the saving in transport costs of having one mine operator replaced by basement-stored clones every few years. However, to avoid media embarassment, I'd avoid omnipotent robots voiced by Kevin Spacey.
To be honest, when somebody is not aware of the intricate and precise relationship between the masses and distances of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon, the importance they play (tides anyone?), how fine tuned these values are, and the effects the slightest variations in these values can have on a biblical scale, that person should not be allowed to talk on the matter.
Furthermore, if ravaging our Planet has taught us anything, is that both mining products and byproducts leave behind extensive pollution, disruption to the surrounding and global ecosystem and is something which is not sustainable in the long term, and that applications that originally required the use of metals, for example, can now be achieved using carbon and nano, and that the future is likely with these materials.
Oh yeah, recycling, anyone?
If he's looking for tritium up there, let's see a working tokamak first - the rest is trivial, Falcon Heavy should be ready by then. Otherwise, think about what effect snatching a piece of the Moon is likely to have on Earth and on a global scale.
First you have to be able to generate more power with fusion than is consumed generating it. We haven't done that yet. Also, all current fusion generator designs generate low-level radioactive contamination. So fusion will have the same long-term radioactive waste disposal problems as fission power currently does. If you're going to mine the moon, mine the aluminum and magnesium and make orbital mirrors for an orbiting solar-thermal plant.
Shouldn't we... I dunno... invent sustainable fusion first? It's kinda like buying the cart before the horse. If the cart was three hundred thousand kilometers in space.
Given the present state of NASA and lack of vision within the US government about the space program, China may well get there first. Their space program is rapidly expanding and their thirst for energy is almost insatiable. I can easily see them pursuing this goal and reap the rewards well before the US gets its act together. If TFA is realistic, this could be a major game changer in terms of who holds economic power on a world scale.
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
We're as close to fusion power as we are zero point energy. Mining the Moon is putting the cart before the horse. Until we have a way to extract energy from fusion mining the Moon is completely pointless.
You know... The huge one with the gravity well that holds the solar system together? What do they call that thing again? Oh yeah... Sol.
Seriously though, photovoltaics have hit and are now past grid parity. First Solar is already in the process of constructing a 2,000 megawatt solar farm in China, which is expected to produce power CHEAPER THAN COAL. This is without subsidies, tax credits or other financial BS. Another 1,700 megawatts of contracted capacity is scattered around the US, to be online by 2017.
I don't see how ferrying fusion fuel back from the moon could be cost effective compared to solar, even if it's done by automated harvesters.
The stated mission of the Chinese Space Program is to mine helium 3 from the moon. I believe their target timeframe is by 2050. At the rate we are going, they will probably still beat us. Wasn't there a story once about a turtle racing a rabbit?
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2006-07/26/content_649325.htm
Didn't we used to have a large stockpile of this once common-place element somewhere?
So he went to a fossil fuel oriented convention to to talk about extracting an energy source that we don't know how to actually use. Do you think they just might have been laughing at him behind his back? Or is it possible that they were pretending to take him seriously because they love the idea of wasting resources for alternate energy development on something that is impractical for the foreseeable future?
Why is Snark Required?
He can't do that. I own the moon, according to this certificate I bought years ago.
Please have him call me to negotiate a deal first.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
100 kilograms of helium 3 could be obtained from processing a 2 kilometer square area of lunar soil down to the depth of three meters. That amount would run a 1,000 megawatt fusion reactor for a year.
Damn. Almost 1,210 megawatts, but not quite!
I just hope that helium-3 won't bond regular helium in some strange new way and make it into a solid.
We'll need clones cheap and quickly to run the station. I bet he hasn't thought of that. We're no where near efficient on cloning people. It's doomed from the beginning.
All we need now is a way to get to the moon...and back...and haul large cargo to the moon...and back. And a way to live continuously on the moon. And we also have to invent a working fusion reactor.
Si-Fi dreams are almost ALWAYS good ideas. The problems are; that behind implementing these dreams are engineers and scientists and their work is a bit harder than dreaming up a wet dream.
Just point your portal gun at the moon.
First, after more than half a century of work, we don't have a controlled fusion technology that generates more power than goes in. Not even close.
Second, if we did, it would probably be a deuterium-tritium reaction, which can be started at much lower energy levels. That's a good way to generate energy if it can be done. It does generate neutrons, though, which means that the containment tends to become radioactive over time. This probably means having some mildly radioactive metal to deal with. That's not a big problem.
D-T fusion also produces tritium, which is valuable,and in 12 years or so decays into ... helium-3.
So if we ever get fusion going, we'll probably have excess helium-3. Helium-3 fusion is cleaner, in that the outputs are helium and protons - no annoying neutrons. If we ever get fusion working, we'll probably see D-T fusion for fixed plants, and He3 fusion for spacecraft, with the He3 coming from the D-T plants.
...if there were already some kind of giant fusion reactor near us in space? And what if that giant fusion reactor were constantly beaming some of its energy at us? That would be AWESOME.
How does on get to a position where you can suggest we mine the moon and be taken seriously? Also assuming humans will do what we always do with any resource and deplete the hell out of it, is it possible this could eventually lead to such problems such as affecting the tides perhaps?
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
Nice to see that politicians start paying attention to privacy :-)
Blow it up.
Find a military application for the helium-3, then you will get your funding...
The current world may have the tech but also the legacy of pollution and rampant debt to contend with.
Assuming the budget was approved, the impact of such a massive project on the environment would be a significant hurdle to overcome before the project could begin in earnest.
The real interesting work is being done by the "low energy nuclear reaction" researchers.
Did you hear about the Italian, Rossi? He's fusing a nano-nickel powder and hydrogen to create copper. Newest Cold Fusion Machine Does the Impossible ... Or Does it?:
As Max Planck said, "science advances on funeral at a time." Wall Street and the ghost of JP Morgan (Tesla-suppressor #1) are not going to be happy once these things hit mass production...
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Look, if there are millions of tons of this helium-3 stuff just lying around on the surface and it is especially easy to "light" in a nuclear fusion "fire", maybe all we have to do is drop an H-bomb "match". Who knows, maybe the resulting explosion, if asymmetrical could blow the moon out of orbit! (Hope it doesn't fall down!)
I came up with this idea after watching "Space 1999" and thinking that there was no way that we could bring up enough nuclear waste to blow the moon out of it's orbit. However if this was merely the ignition maybe it is just within the utmost outer range of something remotely plausible.
I hope this isn't what the U.S. was planning to do In the 50s when they were thinking about nuking the moon! (you look it up :)
A good part of the energy problem may simply vanish if really old people just died instead of going on and on like Energizer bunny using up all sorts of resources and making senile proposals.
Wasn't there a story once about a turtle racing a rabbit?
I don't think that story ended in a way that reinforces your thoughts. In the story, the turtle won. It is the US which is currently the turtle in space. Or maybe the three toed sloth. Or the insignificant amoeba. Not just because of the US' current funk in space exploration and exploitation, but much more fundamentally than that, because the US is history as an economic powerhouse, and could never dedicate the resources necessary.
However, by 2050 China as an economically significant force could well be a distant memory anyway. It could be all about India by then. Or Africa.
I wonder whether it reflects poorly on the U.S Senate or myself when my first interpretation of this title was that he wanted to place explosive mines on the Moon...
stupid Americans! this year the world population will reach 7 Billion - that's about 4 Billion too many people. the shortages in raw materials and water will lead to collapse of economic and political systems as we know worldwide and all your childish looney mining plans are not gonna prevent that. prepare for the worst - it's coming for sure!
man, who cares about that helium 3. it wont be useful till we have some fusion to use it in. now, im much more excited about all that mass and volatiles sitting in a positively mild gravity well.
We first need to invent human cloning and some sort of cryogenic stasis too keep a bunch of spare clones alive on a moon base first.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/
We've known for ages that helium-3 is a good potential fusion fuel, and that mining the moon could be a good source of it. But we don't have fusion power plants yet, nor are we particularly close to getting them. So why talking about mining fuel that we're at least twenty years away from being able to use?
Because we're probably also 20 years away from being able to mine the moon for He3. So maybe now would be a good time to start looking into it.
Forget mining! I wanna get at those whales!
Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
Hope this time they fix that bug in the computer that helped the clones escape.
Won't anybody have the heart to tell him just how massive a project would be required in order to make something like that actually earn a profit?
I'm reminded of the sad stories about the father of the thermonuclear bomb, Edward Teller, as an old man, shuffling about the place with hand-built models, trying to sell the idea of building ever-bigger fusion weapons, oblivious to the fact that he was just being humored and smiled at, by the youngsters who by then, had realised that one would bring to bear far more destructive power with 10x1MT weapons, than with a single 10MT weapon.
It's true: everyone has a use-by date, the point where we outlive our usefulness to the world and just get in the way. That's what retirement is for. There are a myriad of reasons why strip-mining the Moon for He-3 is a dumb idea; the old man's lost his marbles and needs to quit.
Dennis Hope/The Lunar Embassy Corporation?
Saudi Arabia?
The 'Citizens of Earth'?
It's only an arbitrary question at the moment because the costs of exploitation are so high. There's an assumption that oil companies would want to diversify as reserves run out. But if another form of fuel takes its place, is it right to assume that the company, or country, who bears the cost of developing the technology needed to exploit the fuel should also own that fuel.
...we could invest an minuscule fraction of the resources involved in going to the moon to mine 3He in investigating Adrian Rossi's claimed breakthrough cold fusion device (sorry in case the Cold Fusion though police are around, let's call it Low Energy Nuclear Reactions).
I was very sceptical about this when it came on the radar at the start of the year. But all the accounts so far suggest that he does seem to have a real device that produces significant amounts of energy (heat) using a non-chemical process, and in a very consistent and reproducible fashion and which he intends to commercialize in the fairly near term. All the reports I have seen would suggest that it has stood up to examination and investigation by respected sceptics - if it is a scam, then it's an incredibly good one.
Of course, the final proof is when I can replace the boiler in my house with one of Rossi's devices. But that it starting to look increasingly likely with each passing week.
So do you still want to go mining 3He on the moon?
the whalers on the moon?
Now how to I phrase that in a way which is close to your heart? Yes. Consider the funding. Why aren't there any private investors lining up to finance this scheme, eh? He pitched this idea at a petroleum conference, so plenty of parties with deep pockets. None stepped up so far.
So, the good (former) senator tacitly implied *public* funding for his scheme that private investors won't touch. What part of that do you like, as a tax payer?. I personally consider this an attempt to further a hobbyist agenda to revive moon travel, at the public expense, after it was canned. So count me out. There are better ways to spend public money (the best being not to spend it at all).
Secondly: why would we *need* such a boondoggle? We haven't even *got* nuclear fusion operational, despite about half a century of work. Interestingly, the first step in his grand plan is to build a $5 billion demonstration fusion reactor. Nice going! Amidst huge on-going research programmes and demonstration reactors being built (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER for magnetic confinement and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#Inertial_confinement_fusion_as_an_energy_source for inertial confinement) our dear former senator proposes we go it alone and simply build a demo. How cute!
Personally I'm optimistic about nuclear fusion, but it's not going to help us meet our energy needs in the near or medium future. If we're getting away from fossil fuels, then how about first exhausting nuclear fission (yes, despite the Fukushima disaster) geothermal (think the magma reservoir under Yellowstone park; see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110119-yellowstone-park-supervolcano-eruption-magma-science/ ), and "alternative" energy sources like wind, tidal, and solar?
And lets not forget about energy efficiency, shall we? Energy you don't waste is energy you don't have to generate in the first place. Even now US energy efficiency in all walks of life is about one half to one third of what;s usual in e.g. Western Europe (which has a comparable standard of living). Think home insulation and building for energy efficiency. The usual homes and offices are basically sheds with an airco and a heater installed. Easy, simple, and very wasteful.
Design them with a view to energy efficiency and you can make do with about 20% of the energy consumption of "dumb" buildings. Think efficient cars (this is already happening, albeit not through any foresight: the high price of gasoline is making fuel-efficient cars attractive). All of that is something we can do right now, it's proven technology, and it's cost-effective (at current oil prices).
In third place, just suppose we had nuclear fusion. Why-ever would we *need* Lunar hydrogen? The oceans are chock-full of hydrogen, and a lot of that is deuterium, which ''burns" just fine in nuclear fusion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion ). So why go all the way to the moon to get Helium-3 eh? Just to rekindle some moon-projects? Not with my money!
And don't forget the issue of ownership rights to the moon. If the US were to take its traditional point of view (being: "finders keepers", or "you get what you can grab"), it will now face *serious* competition from e.g. China. And what about the other BRIC (Brasil, Russia, India) countries? They're going to agree with the US and China ripping up the moon and unilaterally laying claim to all its minerals, are they?
So ... perhaps it's time to re-discover how much we favour the "co
Obviously this is the way to go because making trips back and forth from the moon will make this the most cost effective energy source.
Why is this titled "former senator..." and not "moonwalker..."? One of these is a more impressive and relevant credential.
... but the Chinese are actively doing it - as seen here in 2007.
Sometimes we to just shut up and do it else we'll have deja vu like solar energy or nuclear power
There's no need for a reason besides the cool factor.
We, as a species, do useless stuff like that all the time: art, science, exploration. This is what makes us different from the rest of the scum that crawls the earth.
My suspicion is that in the end fusion will be got to work, and it will be hopelessly uneconomic compared to wind and stored-heat solar.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Thermal solar power allows you to spread generation over 24 hours. If you have plenty of sun, it's a pretty good idea. It's almost like having a conventional generation station with a thermal mass large enough that it only has to be fueled once in every 24 hours, so you can leverage existing technology to reduce the technical risk. I like solar PV - I have it - but it doesn't work at night, or most of the day in the winter.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It will take a leader of vision to sort out the turf battles and get Schmitt's plan rolling.
Well that certainly rules out that idea. They should have put that sentence at the top of the article instead of the bottom - would have saved time reading about it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Anti-personnel, or anti-tank?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Much energy investment required to travel to the moon, to use the moon to obtain additional energy. Ummm no. As an alternative, lets harvest the hot air from former senators as an energy source.
I've got some mixed feelings about this because of the vast expense and dangers of a mission like this. However, a large scientific mission such as mining and transporting He3 is just what the US needs to get out of its innovative slump and start leading the world again. We are missing the unity of purpose that we had when NASA, DARPA, and others were at the helm of innovation. It would be nice to bring a lot of that back on shore with engineering, construction, and project management done here in the United States by its citizens and for its citizens.
The Sun is covering our planet with all the energy we as a species, could possibly need each and every day.
And still some people don't get it.
Any thinking about energy that doesn't involve harnessing solar energy is a complete waste of time.
All we need is harpoons! We've already spotted that one whale that the Mexicans CLAIM they sent there (yeah, right).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
100 million tons per year for how many years? when you decrease the moons mass and such it will increase its speeding away and lesson tides dramatically , thats a HUGE reason not to mine anything in large amounts. ITS why it hasn't been done nor will it.
Whalers on the moon.
...It's like no cheese I've ever tasted.
We're doomed.
Hah, you barely have a space exploration program, let alone space Marines. Good luck stopping my robots from mining that sweet, sweet helium3 all for me!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress!
Life does seem to imitate art.
Calgary got the talk from Kirk Sorensen about LFTR reactors at our TEDx conference in March. Before Sorensen discovered the Thorium/molten-salt design that's already been tested, he worked on projects in grad studies that convinced him a lot of the high-tech hopes we were sold on (mostly by Hank Stine, Jerry Pournelle and other "high frontier" advocates) back in the 70's, just won't work economically. For space-based solar, he watched the guy doing the economic model put "Lift cost=$0/kg" into the spreadsheet ...and it *still* didn't make money. On He3, similar story.
That 1GW reactor that would take mining the moon 2km^2 X 3m deep, how much could it pay? Well, 1GW = 1 million kW and there are just 8760 hours in a year. If you can get 5 cents per kWh at the plant gates, (coal plants charge less), you can make a total of $438M/year from the plant. Then you have to pay the plant mortgage (on several billion dollars, absent great breakthroughs), the operating costs, and for other fuels. I seriously doubt you'd have $100M left to pay for that moon-mining and shipping home.
Short of teleportation, I don't think you're going to make payroll. Again, even "lift cost =$0" won't put you into the black. Just the cost of running the mining operation in a vicious environment probably exceeds the budget you'd be given.
Sorry. I'd love an economic incentive for a huge, industrial-sized space program, too, but I don't think this is it.
... Party & they don't believe in spending the money required for the USA to go to the moon, or even into low earth orbit, for that matter. They much prefer to pay Russia for the ride... Besides, Republicans much prefer to spend money on wars, not peaceful space science.
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
Royce McCutcheon: "That's the miracle of the franchise. You get all the equipment and know-how you need, plus a familiar brand-name people trust. You'll be on a rocket-ride to the moon! And while you're there, would you pick up some of that nice, green moon money for me Royce McCutcheon!"
Homer: "No deal, McCutcheon that moon money is mine!"
Otherwise would put Wisconsin out of business as the moon is full of cheese.
I think this is a good long-term idea, so long as we always remember that the moon is a harsh mistress.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
it will surely be publicly funded by tax payer dollars only to let some private company reap all the profits. which is just plain retarded in any instance, now or then.
...
Huh? Allow me to clarify. The waste rock is left on the moon. Further, the mass of the moon is ~7.36 × 10^22 kilograms, you could grind up 100 million tons per second and still it would take over 25,000 years to process the whole thing. Stuff in the universe is big man, like really hugely enormous.
The senator has been playing lots of minecraft
Mining shale gas is about a googol easier than mining He3 on the moon of all places and shale gas likely contains He3 too.
I'm quite sure the congress can buy him a copy of Minecraft.
"That's no moon, it's a strip-mine!" Somebody had to say it.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Could what happens in the movie "The time Machine" (2002) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268695/] really come to a reality now ?
Then wait 'til the Martians try to set up a base in the middle of the minefield, and BOOM! That'll teach them to mess with our natural satellites.
I'm sure his audience is very comfortable with going to the moon looking for alternatives to fossil fuels.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Now lets consider the fact that D+T fusion is not here yet and that He3 fusion is more than a 1000 times harder to do. In fact if you can run a He3 fusion plant you can run a DD fusion plant for a fraction of the cost since it is more that 10 times easier to do. Also the ash from DD is He3! It would be cheaper to have DD fusion He3 breeder reactors, than to mine the moon.
Not to mention B11 + H1 -> 3 He4, which is harder than D + D but IIRC easier than He3 + He3. It also releases no neutrons (except for a fraction of a percent from side-reactions when other junk in the plasma gets together) and the fusion energy is easy to convert to DC at a couple megavolts at better than 80% efficiency.
Existing DC power transmission technology already handles 0.8 megavolt and does so with stacks of semiconductor, so converting the DC to transmission-line AC is a solved problem. Boron and light hydrogen are both common and cheap down here.
Crossing my fingers for the Navy's / EMC2's Polywell project, though Dense Plasma Focus or other schemes are also promising.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Forget Helium 3. If you can build a mining operation on the Moon, you can ship anything back to Earth for little cost.
Build oxygen/aluminum-carbon rockets. Use them to launch payloads on an earth intercept orbit.
Build basic aeroshells with heat shields. Load anything you like into them. Have them land anywhere on Earth. Pick any lake, if they float, then no landing gear is needed. Tow the thing to a dock, and cut it up. Recycle the entire mass. Iron, aluminum, copper, silica, glass, rare earth elements, it's all gravy. If the asteroids are factored in, then you could ship oil back too. some asteroids are up to 40% oil. How many cubic kilometers do you want?
A couple of hundred people living in Space/on the Moon could pay for the entire space program. Using linear induction motors, you could launch from the Moon without even using rockets.
Remember, the astronomical cost of space is almost all used in getting there. The return trip is as easy as dropping a rock off a cliff. Once it's set up, the rest is easy. Setting it up is very hard (read astronomically expensive), the fist time. But only the first time.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Having people shipped up and back to work on the moon would get expensive, too. Maybe we could have Sam Rockwell work up there for us?
Buildups of static electricity.
Plus eventual hits and misses from malfunctions of the superconducting cargo launching system.
That chateu on the slopes of Olympus Mons sounds better by the decade.
I wrote a song recently called Music for Mining on the Moon. http://soundcloud.com/milkshake-daddy/music-for-mining-on-the-moon
I think the senator is getting his ideas from me. Time to start wearing the foil hat again, or stop writing songs about my ideas and putting them on the interwebs.
He stated the rich variety of industrial purposes for moon rocks. "With these moon rocks, we can make almost any surface conduct portals," said Schmitt, announcing his partnership with Aperture Science CEO Cave Johnson.