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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."
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).
Not really applicable to the discussion, unfortunately.
The amount of He-3 needed to fuel a hypothetical fusion power plant is small. Like "a handheld tank per year" small - that's the kind of energy density we're talking about here.
A lunar mining operation to get the fuel and bring it back to earth would cost a fortune in terms of dollars to grams. Uncut cocaine would be cheaper. The only reason mining the moon for He-3 makes sense is because the quantities needed are small enough that the fuel cost in dollars per watt is pretty reasonable. But you would not be using lunar helium as a cryogenic liquid or lifting gas, period.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
There's a company called Nautilus Minerals that's developing technology to mine copper sulphide deposits 1600m under the sea and 30km off-shore. They're probably a good 2-3 years away from pulling that off commercially. I suspect that a lot of the remote controlled, hostile environment mobile drilling platform technologies they're working on would be compatible with exactly the sort of moon operation you envisage. If you check out their website, there are some cool underwater shots under the mediakit tab.
World is only running out of helium (one of the most common elements in the universe) because the USA holds half of all the reserves and is selling it off at an artificially low price. It may run out in 30 years time because this useful element primarily wasted in pointless things like balloons at carnivals.