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."

Comments

Useless academic is useless.

[jcr]

This is probably the most publicity that Milligan will ever have in his life.

-jcr

Re:Useless academic is useless.

[noh8rz10]

Ali G [talking to Buzz Aldrin]: People have been arguing about this for years, and I want to bring it up here and settle the issue once and for all - does the moon really exist?

Re:Useless academic is useless.

[wagnerrp]

Environmental objections... What environment? It's the god damned Moon. It's a lifeless near-vacuum.

Cultural objections... Culture has admired the Moon from afar. Helium-3 mining collects helium produced by billions of years of bombardment from solar wind. That means it only exists on the surface. You're not going to notice any difference between today's Moon, and a Moon mined of its helium.

Too much access to energy would be bad... Seriously, just go fuck off.

Re:Useless academic is useless.

[mdenham]

Aside from that declaring it "evil" is specifically a move to shut off debate?

It's an intentionally bad choice of words on his part, designed to garner publicity and be entirely unproductive. Referring to it as "bad" still allows room for the debate to exist - it puts him specifically on one side of it, but that's fine - whereas referring to it as "evil" shifts it from a "should we do this or not" debate to a debate about morality, which, honestly, is not what a debate about mining anything should be about.

For what it's worth, I agree with two of the three terms you're using to describe mining the moon (the point of disagreement being "completely futile", as I'd like to see advancements in automated mining technology, which would have uses down here in the old gravity well).

Re:Useless academic is useless.

[real-modo]

Thanks. Two good paragraphs.

Current global power consumption, 15 TW, is enough to raise the surface temperature by something the order of a hundredth of a degree. So if we used 10,000 times as much energy as we do now, it could be bad.

Agreed, that's not an immediate prospect; and there are five and a half billion people who need more cheap energy.

Re:Useless academic is useless.

[BlueStrat]

there are five and a half billion people who need more cheap energy.

Need? Or want?

Nobody "needs" a longer and healthier life, adequate food, or any of the thousands and thousands of other benefits of affordable energy that makes modern civilization possible.

We didn't even "need" to pick up that jawbone as the black monolith "suggested".

Just a thought, though; Higher energy costs affect the poorest first and to the greatest degree in a negative way. The reverse is also true.

Want to see more people existing above poverty/starvation levels?

Lower energy costs.

Strat

...a cultural what!?

[Penguinisto]

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.

Well of course

[roc97007]

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.

Short sighted

[mechtech256]

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!"

lol

[Lehk228]

teaching fellow of philosophy

sounds like the sort of individual who's opinion I certainly give a fuck about

Thanks but no thanks.

[pla]

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.