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How To Avoid a Scramble For the Moon and Its Resources
MarkWhittington writes "With the Chang'e 3 and its rover Jade Rabbit safely ensconced on the lunar surface, the question arises: is it time to start dividing up the moon and its resources? It may well be an issue by the middle of the current century. With China expressing interest in exploiting lunar resources and a number of private companies, such Moon Express, working for the same goal, a mechanism for who gets what is something that needs looking into. Moon Daily quotes a Russian official as suggesting that it can all be done in a civilized manner, through international agreements. On the other hand, law professor and purveyor of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds suggests that China might spark a moon race by having a private company claim at least parts of the moon. 'International cooperation will certainly rule supreme while there are no economic interests, while it is not clear where commercial profits lie. Scientists can't help communicating with each other and sharing ideas.'"
The problem with mining the moon, and space travel in general, is a pure physics problem. One that isn't easily solved. The reason that we haven't advanced space travel much in the past 30 years is because it's actually not really solvable without some huge leap in technology, such as anti-gravity drives or space elevators, which are all science fiction at the moment.
The problem is this. Since there's little-to-no air for spacecraft to put against as we leave the atmosphere, the only way we can accelerate (or resists accelerating back towards the earth), as we reach the upper atmosphere is to eject mass out the back of the spacecraft at high speed. Due to Newton's third law, pushing mass out the back of a spacecraft creates a reactive force propelling the spacecraft forward. You can't have an electric spacecraft like you can an electric car because there's no road for the spacecraft to push against. For every gram of cargo you want to put into space, you have to have enough fuel to propel that mass into space, also, remembering that the fuel itself has mass, which itself must be propelled a certain distance until it is expelled.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
What are the resources there?
1. Silicon
2nd most abundant element in Earth's crust
2. Oxygen
Most abundant element in Earth's crust
3. Aluminum
3rd most abundant element in Earth's crust
4. Iron
4th most abundant element in Earth's crust
5. Magnesium
In the top 10 of the most abundant elements in Earth's crust.
6. Water ice (in craters near the poles)
Oceans
7. Helium 3
10s of ppb only, and just on the surface (solar wind doesn't really penetrate).
Also, it's useless as an energy source compared to everything else:
If we are at a technological level capable of building a fusion plant for He3,
we can build one for hydrogen for much less. And thus, again, Oceans.
8. Titanium
In the top 10 of the most abundant elements in Earth's crust.
9. Lots of trace minerals
In traces very similar to those on Earth, given the common history.
10. Solar energy
Deserts.
So unless the idea is to produce stuff that goes further out and not back to Earth,
mining the Moon is just an insanely difficult way to get resources we have plenty
of down here.
Admittedly, building an actual production economy for space exploration would be
a great idea, and I'm all for it. Waiting for humanity to get the technical capability (to say
nothing of the will) to do so might still take a while though. We're far from being there.
Despite the feeling that I'm talking to a five year old stuck in the "Why? Why? Why?" phase, I'll try to address this one as well.
Propel vehicles from Earth orbit or from an Earth-Moon Lagrangian point to remote locations in the solar system for the purpose of sustaining the life functions of astronauts while they travel. Humans are in space because there's cool stuff there.
If you ask me why humans need vehicles or why there's cool stuff in space, I'm going to really wish I could reach through my monitor and severely beat you about the face and neck.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.