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Scottish Academic: Mining the Moon For Helium 3 Is Evil
MarkWhittington writes "Tony Milligan is a teaching fellow of philosophy at the University of Aberdeen and is apparently concerned about helium 3 mining on the moon. In a recent paper he suggested that it should not be allowed for a number of reasons which include environmental objections, his belief that the moon is a cultural artifact, and that too much access to energy would be bad for the human race."
This is probably the most publicity that Milligan will ever have in his life.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But they keep proving me wrong.
Insufflation of lunar helium gives humans telekinesis.
Seriously - does this guy have any clue as to how frickin' BIG the Moon is? You could carve a hole in it the size of New York City and it would barely be noticeable. You could carve out the entire dark side of the Moon and no one would ever see it (and misnomer aside, it gets just as much sunlight, thus He3, etc...)
The environmental angle? Maybe if it all got brought back here, okay... having not RTFA, I hope he isn't worried about the Moon's "environment", namely because it really doesn't have one of note.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
How did this make it onto /. ?
This guy is a nutjob nobody has ever heard of. 'Teaching fellow of philosophy' ... wow, nice job meta-mods.
Too much access to large amounts of cheap energy would mean that we don't continue to buy it from current sources. We can't have that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I would say that mining the moon is the best thing we as a race can do. No wars of intervention to get at resources "owned" by another nation. No environment damage due to exposure of contaminants or by-products. I guess there is a chance that the most powerful nations might keep the other ones from grabbing a piece of the pie, but there is so much surface area, that it is cheaper to mine than to wage war. Unlimited energy will also allow more time to develop green (direct from solar) technology, but maybe an argument is to be had that doing so will cause us to be lazy in this endevour.
puritanism is that horrible feeling that somewhere, somebody might be having fun.
it's actually the basis of the entire "environmental" movement. humans can't just keep getting richer and better fed, we must be doing something wrong.
remember, nuclear winter? no wait, global warming, that's it! whatever it is, humans are causing it and it's bad. why didn't we listen to malthus!
Given a long enough time frame, the human race will either inevitably fizzle out on our single planet, or move on to be an interstellar civilization for at least some period of time. If the second possibility is to happen, utilizing the moon will most certainly be a stepping stone there. Whether it's covering the surface in solar panels, mining it for helium 3, or something entirely different like simply using it as a staging area for longer range launches, we can't say, but it's virtually guaranteed that humans will be all over the moon in some capacity if they are to expand beyond our planet/solar system. On another note, the moon is a boring bland rock compared to Earth. I bet the moon is incredibly desperate for us to do something interesting on its surface... "please, let something, anything happen aside from getting smacked with another space rock and getting a 15 millionth identical crater!"
teaching fellow of philosophy
sounds like the sort of individual who's opinion I certainly give a fuck about
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
We discover the Moon is actually a giant Egg.
too much access to energy would be bad for the human race.
Ah, so the classic "we should all live in the dark and grow our own food" argument. Beautiful. Give King Ludd my warmest regards.
Free hint, Tony - Yes, many of the energy booms of human history have come along with a variety of ills. But they have also come along with the single greatest periods of progress as well, both social and technological. The industrial revolution caused a good bit of pollution, but basically made human slavery a net loss, economically. And fusion, as a nice perk, pollutes less than fission (which we already do), which in turn pollutes less than dinofuels (which we also already do because the hippies would rather let birds - and us - die that build more fission plants).
So in summary - Go fuck yourself, Tony. Live in the dark if you want. I like computers, and air conditioning, and cars, and concrete, and aluminum cans, and cheap plastic bottles.
I have never seen any dumber creatures than Philosophy academics. Meeting them sometimes in a campus dining hall, they will always spoil you lunch if you are unfortunate to share a table with them and they try to have an "intellectual" conversation with you.
You mock the good professor of philosophy but you are debating the number of non-existent technologies that can dance on the head of an invisible pin.
Good work, whackjobs.
Evil.
You have loads of fools around here. This is just another one.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm still waiting on that slashdot article introducing the worlds first working economically viable fusion generator.
For the love of God won't some one please think of the Cheese?
If we start mining the moon and bringing it back to earth, who's going to eat all that cheese? I'll tell you who, no one. That's no way for cheese to go bad.
So, is this guy an intelligent design proponent? Oh wait, that's just the summary. In TFA the word appears once:
That's a different statement. Still, there're some hidden premises there he should support if he wants people to buy that argument.
mining the moon or anything else isn't inherently evil. cheap, abundant energy isn't inherently evil either. i do not want to stand in the way of progress but, obviously this chap and i see and agree about how the human race runs. the more cheap, abundant energy we have, the more we propagate ourselves and the more resources we consume. i hope that if we ever reach a point where we can harvest vast amounts of energy from the moon, we will also be able to use that energy to move and sustain populations on other bodies in space. i would also hope that we have the knowledge and wisdom to use that energy to recycle every-frickin-thing we discard in order to prevent turning the earth into something as barren as the moon.
I'm being told to stay away from the moon and ignore all the unlimited energy it has? Well that settles it. Now I HAVE to do it.
What are you going to do old man, throw space regolith at me? Eat my lung shredding moon dust!
The elements in our bodies come from exploding stars.
The earth coalesced from a swirling ball of gas and dust. Which had various quantities of these elements. Then yadda yadda, lifeorms started popping up. Of which man was one of the later variants.
Man needs this fishbowl of earth to survive in the universe, just like goldfish need a fishbowl to survive in our living room. Imagine if the goldfish could get to the refrigerator.
We're just trying to get to the refrigerator. Or maybe even go outside.
The earth is not the center of the universe. It's a smallish planet in the solar system. It's part of the universe. Just like man. Eventually the sun will red giant. If we don't go outside - leave the womb - we're finished. A fruit that died on the vine. Seems like we should be working on that problem now.
“Cultural artifact” has a specific meaning: A remnant of something created by a culture.
Hm, what if he’s on to something?
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, SAVE FOR THE ONE THAT’S RELATIVELY EASY TO GET TO
We should all be happy to go back to the pre-industrial ages. Sure it means the vast majority of humans will have to die off, and the ones that live will have much shorter, harder, lives but hey, it would be good for the planet (depending on how you define good)! As such all of us should be happy, no honoured to do that. Excepting for professors, of course. They advance knowledge so they clearly need to be allowed to keep all of their modern conveniences. But the rest of us, back to the dark ages!
That is what always amuses me about the "industrial society is bad!" types is I've never seen any of them practice what they preach. None of them go and live in the wilderness, off the land, eschewing all modern technology except for the rare times they come to give a talk on it. Heck none of them even go back to Amish/Mennonite levels of technology. They live modern lives, enjoying all the conveniences, and then say others shouldn't.
How about, try it first, then see if maybe there's a reason we like all this new stuff?
import super cheap energy, and the same reason fusion might be bad:
We have no way to siphon off extra waste heat into space. Without that, we will most assuredly overheat our planet because all work has waste heat. so if we have unlimited work, we will have unlimited heat.
I will do my part by not visiting this topic ever again.
Why is Snark Required?
Global warmist at it's best. He probably forgot to add that we should euthanize in addition 5 billion people to return Earth to balance.
Here's the call for papers
So he wrote a paper on the ethics of Lunar Mining that actually considered possible ethical objections to the proposed activity. Is that so odd? Wouldn't it be better to hash this all out before the technology exists to strip-mine the moon?
After all, do we really want whalers on the moon?
Ah, so the classic "we should all live in the dark and grow our own food" argument. Beautiful. Give King Ludd my warmest regards.
This guy is basically arguing (among other things) that because 100% of the energy from He-3 mining would not be used to directly power "a great life-enhancing project" - it is all bad and it should not be done.
Furthermore, in the absence of a radical alteration in patterns of human behaviour, a good deal of energy from He-3 mining is unlikely to go towards a great life-enhancing project. It is likely to be used for comparatively trivial purposes such as advertising, waste and the enhancement of prestige.
This is part and parcel of living in a society where choice is valued. However, there are some choices (the choice to be cruel, aggressive, destructive or wasteful) which may not be worth having and which, in some cases, we ought not to have.
You know... kinda the way paper and pens should not be produced because not all of them are used to create works of Shakespeare or Michelangelo.
Anyone willing to dig for more pearls of wisdom, here is his academia.edu page with his other works.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Need that energy for the laser on the moon to destroy Washington D.C and I will destroy another major city every hour on the hour. That is, unless, of course, you pay me
one hundred billion dollars.
Then this fellow will begin to say that access to energy is a good thing.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Sounds like the plot of Red-Mars. Environmentalists don't think we should be messing with mars and sabotage efforts to terraform it.
... if the territory is uninhabited, then it's a 'cultural artifact.' But if it's inhabited, then it's a 'frontier.'
Right. Gotcha.
Oh, gee, look at the time. I need to water my cat. Bye.
I can see the fnords!
Stories like this make me hate human beings even more.
Oh, and it seems to me that this dude has:
All in all, not too surprising. As to how this story wound up here, I write it off to a combination of it being a slow news day, and the topic being too funny NOT to post.
-Red
Surely everyone here has watched Iron Sky ????
Hell, *that* is why it's a bad idea to mine He3 on the moon. Before you know it, we'll be over-run with Nazis from the dark side of the moon!
The Moon: A Ridiculous Liberal Myth
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
First, make fusion work.
Then we can go mine the helium-3.
Meanwhile, we can mine other stuff.
Perhaps Tony Milligan did not like how "Moon" ended. I liked the film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_%28film%29).
Too much access to energy would be bad... Seriously, just go fuck off.
I think the problem he should be more concerned about is too much access to good scotch....he seems to be suffering from it.
I wonder if this nut was with that group/movement a few years back that was trying to get some resolution passed (in the UN maybe?) designating the moon (and eventually all celestial bodies) as some kind of nature preserve to prevent any kind of utilization/exploration. I agree completely that we need to be conscientious of our actions as we spread into the solar system and perhaps one day the galaxy, but we should expand the reaches of our understanding, exploration and habitation. Large swaths of the moon should be left alone for future generations and we should go out of our way to prevent any significant alterations of a celestial body without careful consideration. That said the universe is not some static art-piece that should/could be preserved in a single state. 600 million years of our own planets many massive changes should have been more than enough evidence for this idiot.
We are burning all oil here, probably getting out of that not renovable resource in this century or next. And that, in just 200 years of a civilization that been around for 10000 years, from a species that exist since 1 millon years ago, and will be out for anyone/anything here in the next billon years. And is it not just an energy source, it have a lot of derivatives that will be hard/expensive/impossible in practice to get from other sources. Compared to that, the limited amount of He3 that we could bring from the moon, and in a not very fast rate, won't count a lot.
Regarding the energy surplus, getting the same amount of energy from the sun (i.e. collectors in the desert, or satellites that somewhat beam down the energy) would have a similar effect.
The real problem is the civilization or the current culture, not using the moon as energy source or not. The current agenda is to use everything as if would be no tomorrow (thing that will happen if we keep acting like that). If you don't fix it, the moon won't matter anyway.
I think you're forgetting that solar insolation currently dwarfs any human energy generation by several orders of magnitude. Just the changes in the solar cycle cause more of an impact than the energy/heat we produce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
A lot of the jobs left the US exactly because of cheap energy.
It is cheaper to use low wages labor in some other country and ship products here than to produce them here locally. Heck in some cases its also cheaper to transport raw materials from America, process them over in the east and then ship them back and sell the finished goods. Cheaper energy means they cut the cost of transportation still find cheap labor (maybe in more remote areas) and sellstuff to the unemployed at a better profit.
Then again maybe Helium iii is the fuel that would be better for space travel? Now that might let us exploi... er explore the other worlds in the solar system. And what exactly our we "preserving the moon" for? more craters? Unless there is life there, or by mining it we affect our planet directly, its not really much of anything to preserve, is there?
So if it gets some of us off this rock and lets us have a backup civilization, I think thats a good thing... I'm kinda in the thought there is (or was) a lot of life in the solar system, and that vast fossil fuels will be more of a martian thing.
I recently saw a documentary called "Mass Effect" that said Uranus is a much better source of He-3 anyway.
that actively study ethics.
To dismiss them so lightly on an opinion of ethics is the same as dismissing a doctor's medical opinion with a 'lol' tacked on for good measure.
But who's going to pay for the launch ?
What the subject says.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
He is just afraid that the Chinese or Russians get it before his own government does.
The good professor spent too many evenings watching the movie Moon. [;-)]
Limitless power afraid because it will spell the end of capitalism and the entire existence and need for currency...
the professor is just scared he'll no longer have more economic power value as someone who is now unemployed, because the only reason professors procreate is simply because they have more money than someone unemployed -___-
No money and professors won't have genetically deficient babies anymore!!! (DOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!)
Maybe he has a harsh mistress ...
But I have to agree, it would be a waste to use all that energy on advertisements.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Of course mining the moon for helium-3 would be evil. Did Iron Sky teach us nothing? Only Hitler would mine the moon for helium-3.
This news just in: Crackpot has theory about Moon.
Mining the moon for helium-3 is merely stupid. (1) there are no fusion power plants, (2) helium-3 is crap fuel, and (3) there is hardly any helium-3 on the moon anyway.
Oh and Hanlon's Razor comes to mind: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Scottish Academic Mining the Moon For Helium 3 Is Evil
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Go on, its only 5 pages, it doesn't use too many long words, and if you have comments why not contact the author?
... and that too much access to energy would be bad for the human race.
Rubbish! - With unlimited energy we could easily fix both the CO2-related issues from centuries of burning various fossil fuels, and any byproduct from having all this energy.
With unlimited energy we could control the weather for instance. All the damage from extreme weather would be only in history books.
Oh, and of course mining Helium-3 is evil. That's why the nazis hiding on the back side of the Moon is doing it. They went to the Moon because is was the evil thing to do, and the nazis - being ultimately evil at heart - thus had no choice but to go to the Moon and do the evil thing: Mine Helium-3. Returning to Earth in a huge flying saucer called "Götterdämmerung" to set up their nazi-utopia is actually less evil than mining the Helium-3. They even made a film called "Iron Sky" about this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Seriously guys, he's a philosopher. I'm surprised no-one here has pointed out that it's the Helium that is keeping the moon floating way up there. Take the Helium away and it will sink back down to earth and we do not want that to happen. You think global warming is bad, just imagine how bad it would be with the Moon orbiting at 10000m. I guess we could try to time it so it touches down in the Sahara but if it overshoots it's goodbye Panama.
I don't think the the nazis on the dark side of the moon really care ;-)
...and we're about to destroy it - that is kinda what the Moon is. It's the only place in the Universe that will have any evidence of the first billion years of the Earth's history - including possible early signs of life's evolution. It's far more important than Antarctica in that respect.
History says otherwise:
"Besides, of all ways whereby great wealth is acquired by good and honest means, none is more advantageous than mining; for although from fields which are well tilled (not to mention other things) we derive rich yields, yet we obtain richer products from mines; in fact, one mine is often much more beneficial to us than many fields. For this reason we learn from the history of nearly all ages that very many men have been made rich by the mines, and the fortunes of many kings have been much amplified thereby."
From here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38015/38015-h/38015-h.htm
So we are mining energy instead of metals now, anybody know a good book about energy?
Beyond that I first want to see a space efficient fusion reactor that works. What ever happened to Bussards wiffle ball reactor the US Navy swallowed?
Je me souviens.
I mean, it has to be. That's serious Onion-levels of having us on.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
"Too much energy would be bad"....says the guy who uses a computer to write novels, lives in a first world country (Scotland), uses aircraft, works in an air-conditioned fairly modern university etc...
Perhaps Dear old Tony should help decrease this coming "too much energy apocalypse" by refusing to use vehicles and walking everywhere, growing his own food (without the help of machines or anything created by industrialization) and live in a tent (woven by himself from plants he finds in and around Aberdeen).
This guy is crazy...too much energy is what? How does one define and who is this person to know what "too much energy" is? As energy prices fall under "supply & demand", If he is worried about the "cultural" aspect of the moon. Well, just mine the dark side of the moon. We can't see that side from the Earth anyway.
"having not RTFA"
"Score:5, Insightful"
if you read the article, the one milligan wrote, you will see that you are not being very score:5 insightful.
The main reason mining the moon for Helium 3 is evil is because it's cruel to create an army of slowly-degrading Sam Rockwell clones to carry out the mining operation.
He is probably just against Grafiti
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If energy was suddenly free/cheap to produce, it would still be sold by the same people who sell it today at market value.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Looking at the heat released into the environment...not a big deal.
But, what do we do with more energy? Probably the biggest environmental change on the planet us two legged creatures had done has come from the chain saw, cutting down a fair percent of trees of the world.
Further reading, End Game, Derrick Jensen
and that too much access to energy would be bad for the human race
Fine. Then tell everyone to stop breeding so much.
If the human species grows by a factor of 1000, then our energy needs will grow by a factor of 1000. If he refuses to deal with the reality of that, then he needs to step out of the way and let someone competent deal with it.
I guess "academics" don't need to be problem-solvers, do they?
Did you know the earth is actually the moon's moon? But we don't call it that, because it would belittle the name of our moon. Which is the moon.
the philosophy is dead and anyone that has practiced it in the last 50 years is just riding the coat tail of it's reputation.
What have the done? nothing. What have they added? nothing.
Hell they don't even changing their philosophical questions when science as rendered them moot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seriously, the first time I saw the article was about helium 3 mining on the moon Iron Sky came right to mind. I thought that was just Sci-Fi BS they made up as a premise for why nazis would be on the moon at all.
Let's assume you can get He3 from the moon and produce electricity with it on Earth so that anyone who wants it can use as much as they want for a hundreth of a cent per kilowatt hour. That's a lot of assumptions about the ability to use it for power AND a transmission facility.
In my mind what this enables is a HUGE demand for stuff that runs on electricity. Even assuming no improvement in efficiency, everyone would want an electric car. Air conditioning. Those two things alone would involve major resource extraction for batteries, components like copper tubing, etc.
And that's just the start -- other things that are too energy intensive to do now could suddenly be seen as viable, whether it's mining or other things, even if they can't directly use free electricity as carbon fuels would become much cheaper as industry and consumers switch to electricity instead.
The idea that we would have too much energy is absurd, but the second and third order effects of free energy might actually accelerate a lot of environmental issues that are slowed now not because someone cares about excessive resource extraction but because it takes a great deal of energy to do them.
Why should anyone really care about a philosophy professors views on environmental issues, never mind those of space exploration.
I mean if he were some time of expert this might perhaps be news, if the idea presented were new. This is just so random nonsense.
All he has to do is eliminate the current use of energy for advertisement, waste, and prestige and we would never need to mine it for energy.
I see no reason for him to worry, he just has to get busy :)
If it's "evil"!
Nobody cares about the dark side of the moon, mine the fuck out of it!
Just don't let NASA up their drawing a big wang on the front side.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Refreshing to hear someone espousing a view that isn't self centred. He's damn right. What humans need is LESS energy and more respect for the Universe we live in.
01/01/01
I came here for Iron Sky-references, and I got disappointed.
The most important trueth is that too much energy is not good for us.