Slashdot Mirror
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?
It's just that every time they are about to fold under the pressures of reality, they discover a new advance in methods for predicting the end of the human race. (Oh the irony!)
...allowing for _direct_ brain-to-brain communication without any of this wires-and-computer sideshow.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
I think you're using a different definition of "cheap energy" than did I. It's a legitimate argument, (one that I would support) but not germain to H3 from the moon.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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'm sure that Daniel Dennett would agree with your overly broad characterization.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
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
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.
actually it was teaching fellow which I objecrted to, however I spoke too hastily, I parsed it under the american definition, which is a glorified T.A. under the UK system it does not mean that, he does in fact have a Doctorate.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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