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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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
And the problem if mankind dies on the vine? Are we that critical to the universe that the universe will suffer if the human race is no longer here? There are two possibilities one, there is other intelligent life in the universe or two, there is not. If there is, then we are not unique, so our loss would not be a loss at all. If there is not other intelligent life, then our loss makes no difference as what we are trying to preserve is of no use, nobody but us cares about it -- there is nobody to leave a legacy for.
In either case, when mankind ceases to exist, our actual existence will not even have been a blink of the eye on the cosmic time scale. The Catholics say "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." That phrase was coined long before we knew much about the universe, but has more truth in it than many people realize. At some point in the future, the cosmic dust that created the human race will be returned to the universe. What we are will go on, in new forms, new stars, new planets, maybe even new lifeforms. But who we are will cease and there won't be anybody to care.
No wars of intervention to get at resources "owned" by another nation.
But there is the old fashioned war for control of a resource. We have nice friendly agreements about scientific study and no territorial claims at the moment, however at the moment we can barely get there and there is nothing we can economically exploit. If we get to the point where there is something very valuable to exploit and one or a small number of nations can control access to it then things may change with respect to no territorial claims and free access.
... there is so much surface area, that it is cheaper to mine than to wage war.
Wars/battles are sometimes fought to deny resources to someone else.
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.
But I have to agree, it would be a waste to use all that energy on advertisements.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
This is a repost from back in the day when trolling was a performance artform. Slasdot trolls would come up with ludicrous rants, knowing that some people would ignore them, or find them funny, but a few would take them completely seriously and argue, thus increasing the hilarity.
A troll is plausible and intended to provoke response. This is not. This is satire.