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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.'"
Won't someone think of the native people?
Mooninites are people too! They're from the moon.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The UN isn't the best group all the time, but they are the largest international and best organized and most accepted international organization to do this. The moon is one of the best sources for Helium 3 IIRC.
I am me, I am the anomaly in the machine.
You're so jaded you just come off as ignorant. Bridges standing, roads open, clean water, electricity: those are all *major* problems that China and India actively struggle with. We don't.
What's there left to discuss? If you want who is moon's owner, just check whose flag is planted on it.
Somebody already did.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Some badguy once said that the way to win a battle was "He who gets there fustest with the mostest". That typically works pretty well for most human endeavors. We should want a scramble to get to the moon. Human innovation, powered by greed, has typically been the best catalyst for moving forward. I fail to see why this would be any different.
The UN would undoubtedly screw it up, as would any other controlling agency. So for the time being, leave it uncontrolled. It causes no harm and may do good.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It's not like the Moon has native wildlife that we might disrupt. It's an airless lifeless rock right now. Why would we want to bother trying to preserve it in that state?
Um, because humans have a tendency to royally fuck up every environmental factor we can get our grubby little meathooks on, and the Moon plays a vital role in the tidal flow of our oceans?
If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Right. We're so backwards we can't even land the most complex lander ever devised on Mars. Or put satellites in orbit and Jupiter and Saturn.
And keep a manned spacecraft up and running for years. Or pay for the Hubble (several times).
Awful. Awful. Awful.
Yeah China - they manage to take mostly Russian technology and do something that both the US and the USSR did 40 years ago.
The Chinese are to be congratulated - no matter where the tech came from, it's a significant accomplishment. And FSM knows we need some competition here (it's the American way, right?). But quit the angst.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No one can get to the Moon and no one has the resources to do so. Realistically this is something we'll have to figure out in a hundred years, not every time someone lands a rover on the moon.
We went from the Wright brothers flight to landing a couple dudes on the Moon in less than 60 years. Because we had a reason.
Never underestimate the drive and ability of human beings with a purpose.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Bridges standing, roads open, clean water, electricity: those are all *major* problems that China and India actively struggle with. We don't.
Except for the bridges that have collapsed and the ones that are in critical need of maintenance; roads barely worth the name; constant water boil advisories across various parts of the country and - I take it you've never lived in the Northeast if you think we don't still laughably struggle with electricity.
Keep waving that flag though and ignoring our ailing infrastructure. We'll be number one in the race to the bottom at least, I guess.
Dude, we have two active rovers on Mars - one that has been roving around for 10 years. In addition, two of the orbiters we sent there are still operational, with another en route. The ESA has had an orbiter for 10 years. Even India has an orbiter en route to Mars. Do you really think we don't have the capability to land a rover on the moon?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Helium 3 is 15 million dollars per kilogram, which makes transport less of a concern and we haven't really even figured out how to use it yet., hypothetically, it is the only known element that can be used in a fusion reactor with little or NO radioactive waste.
the only place we can get it is natural gas wells (it is extremely scarce, but sometimes found in very small quantities in wells), it happens to be relatively abundant on the moon.
The race for the moon is really a race for clean nuclear energy, which is quite a prize.
First place the moon far away.
Next introduce a large gravity well around earth. Then make sure there is a vacuum on the moon and the only source of power is the sun.
That will avoid a scramble for a long time.
The problem is not technology to go to space, you americans already have this. The problem is will to do this again.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Yes, and when technology supports shipping quintillions of tons, we'll worry about that.
If we mine a shitload of material out of the moon, won't that affect it's gravitational effect on the planet?
Mass of moon: 7 x 10^22 kg
World annual steel production: 1 x 10^12 kg
World annual concrete production: 2 x 10^13 kg
Not an imminent problem to solve!
The shuttle cost $10k/lb to bring things 200 miles up to the ISS. SpaceX knocks that considerably. Now lets talk about going to the moon, being able to actually mine something, and bring it back. There is nothing that values in the $1M+/lb to go and get. It's not cost effective and will be much more than 50 years until it is and there is any sort of land grab because of it. Until then the Moon is huge, and the players so limited there will be no butting heads.
No, we NEED to go back. We can't let China - a communist nation that hates freedom - beat us at this. In fact, we need to one up them and send a manned mission to Mars. To do that, we should pour tons of money into NASA and various scientific organizations. That'll show those dirty, rotten commies.
(Waits for the "blindly patriotic" crowd to start chanting for more money to NASA and science.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Nice plan, but I'd add two final steps:
7. After the Congress critters are sent up there, we send lawyers and other politicians.
8. Recall any science folks sent there to set up the place and let them run the whole setup into the ground in an isolated fashion.
Optional step 9: Broadcast the whole thing as a great new reality show: Politicians and Lawyers On The Moon!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Good idea. Why not the Moon after the UN did such a great job divvying up Palestine and managing any subsequent conflicts over the land/resources there.
OK, so the UN made one big mistake (fuelled by Great Britain's incompetence) in their history, but the organisation as a whole works pretty well. Just wish they could take over regulation of the Internet! They might get the moon bit sorted out first though.
What are the resources there?
1. Silicon
2. Oxygen
3. Aluminum
4. Iron
5. Magnesium
6. Water ice (in craters near the poles)
7. Helium 3
8. Titanium
9. Lots of trace minerals
10. Solar energy
I'm not ignorant. I'm just paying attention. It's like the character Hari Seldon's observations in Asimov's Foundation series. You start noticing problems with the little things -- a burned out light here or there; a pothole that never gets repaired; road signs that get knocked down and are not replaced; etc, etc. Individually, they don't amount to much, but they are indicative of poor planning, bad management, and indifference.
Proverbs 21:19
Why the HELL would you want to AVOID a scramble for Lunar resources? This is something to actively encourage, to get some permanent human settlements off this rock.
Every man/country for themselves, and may the best and fastest effort win.
Necron69
Let's think for a second. How is it that planets of different mass orbit the same sun? How can it be that nearby planets are small (Mercury), moderately distant planets are large (Jupiter), and distant planet[oid]s are small (Pluto)? How is it that asteroids orbit both near (asteroid belt) and far (kuiper belt)? There seems to be no consistent requirement for orbital distance as a function of orbital mass.
Indeed! It turns out, if you were to make half of the moon's mass simply disappear, the moon's orbit wouldn't really change. See, the gravitational attraction between a planet and its moon is directly proportional to that moon's mass. Additionally, the momentum of the moon is proportional to that moon's mass as well. That means that when you vanish half of the moon, you halve both the force exerted on the moon by gravity but also the required force to adjust its momentum to keep it in orbit. That is, it all just works out.
More important, though, is to remember the scale we're talking about. The moon really is quite large. Even if we mined a lot of water from it (there's really not that much to mine, as far as we know), an amount equal to all the water here on Earth, we'd be changing the moon's mass by 1.9%. The impact on terrestrial tides would be virtually immeasurable. An earlier post of mine examines this in more detail. The tidal acceleration we experience because of the moon is around 1.1E-7 g, which is quite small. In fact, the tidal acceleration we experience because of the sun is about 45% of that (0.52E-7 g). A 1.9% decrease in the moon's mass (an extreme worst-case scenario) would result in the moon's tidal acceleration being reduced to 1.08E-7 g, a change of 2.09E-9 g. Since apparent gravity varies up to 0.5% across different locations on the surface of the Earth, it's safe to say that even extreme mining of the moon won't have any measurable effect on Earth.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Why are there humans on earth to be kept alive?
The goal of "Star Wars" was to destroy Communism by raising the cost of nuclear aggression to beyond what the Soviet economy could afford. It did exactly that.
I think future history books would benefit from a Great Lunar War.
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.
It's hard to imagine a scenario where mining HE3 on the moon is more economically viable than wind/solar/hydro. Well, maybe for powering settlements on the moon itself, but there's a chicken and egg problem there. Right now there is little incentive to setup permanent habitation on the Moon, and the only reason people can think of is to mine HE3 that would primarily go towards powering said moon settlements.
Maybe someday we'll need to build absolutely massive space structures and it will make sense to mine the moon for raw materials to save on launch costs (especially if you're using nuclear rockets that would be politically impossible on Earth), but humanity is nowhere near undertaking this kind of project, and I fully expect it to be a pipe dream for my entire lifetime.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
The folks killed by the I-35W bridge collapse beg to differ.
And before you object that anecdotes are not data, the ASCE thinks that America is barely passing overall.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Duh. The whole point of mining on the moon is that it is IN SPACE. It is at the bottom of a shallow gravity well, with no atmosphere, so a simple mass driver (way more efficient that chemical rockets) can be used to launch materials into orbit. Other than maybe the Helium-3, no one is going to bring these materials back to earth.
To reach orbit you need to be able to generate enough force to lift your craft above the bulk of the atmosphere and put on enough speed to obtain orbital velocity.
Once you are there drag will be minimal, and even small propulsive forces will add up over time to get you escape velocity. Gravitational forces will not stop you from doing this as long as you overcome whatever the atmospheric friction is (if gravity is very strong, you just take longer to put on the speed to escape from orbit.)
The basic principle of ejecting matter with more energy is sound, but the devices we have which can do this tend to be heavy with low thrust, so using an ion drive to escape the atmosphere and hit orbital velocity is beyond our capabilities at the moment.
This is really more a matter of producing a lot of energy quickly (and not melting whatever we are using to push mass out at a high rate with high energy.)
I do expect that we will get better at this over time, chemical energy is just very easy in comparison.
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