Billionaire Teams Up With NASA To Mine the Moon

schwit1 writes: Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year, just took another step closer toward that lofty goal. Earlier this year, it became the first company to successfully test a prototype of a lunar lander at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The success of this test—and a series of others that will take place later this year—paves the way for Moon Express to send its lander to the moon in 2016. Moon Express conducted its tests with the support of NASA engineers, who are sharing with the company their deep well of lunar know-how. The NASA lunar initiative—known as Catalyst—is designed to spur new commercial U.S. capabilities to reach the moon and tap into its considerable resources.

Comments

Considerable resources?

[Art Popp]

Have you seen how much rock we have down here already?

Re:Considerable resources?

[Sperbels]

Do you know how much it costs to get it off Earth's surface?

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of valuable metals pretty close to where I live. That doesn't mean that I'm allowed to dig them out.

Re:Considerable resources?

[kheldan]

Have you seen how much of a shit-fit environmentalists throw when anyone wants to mine anything on this planet anymore? Nobody should have any qualms about mining anything on the Moon since it has no ecosphere to start with. Of course there's the question of it being economical to do so..

Re:Considerable resources?

[Deadstick]

Seems like the only resource worth bringing down from the Moon would be one that just don't hardly exist down here...but if you were planning a long-term presence there, getting resources locally could be a lot cheaper than hauling them up.

Even so, the startup costs would be pretty intimidating.

Re:Considerable resources?

[itzly]

Since everything we mine gets processed and used here on Earth, what would be the point of getting it off the surface ?

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably due to Helium-3

"Helium-3 (He-3) is a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. It is rare on Earth, and it is sought for use in nuclear fusion and fourth generation nuclear weapons research.[1] The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon (embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years)" - Wikipedia

Re:Considerable resources?

[slashmydots]

I do recall a slashdot story that conclusively stated that the only thing of use on the moon is tritium for hydrogen fusion. We can't build a fusion power plant on Earth let alone in space. There is literally nothing on the moon worth getting. They could sell the moon dust on ebay maybe?

Re:Considerable resources?

[fustakrakich]

First we have to bring up what we need to the earth's surface. Anyway, we have only penetrated about 7.5 miles. With almost 4000 more to go, I have confidence we will find what we need right here. The moon would make for a very convenient launch pad with the vehicles being built up there. It will be a very long time before shipping material to earth will be cheaper than regular old mining.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Sperbels]

None. That's my point. If you want build anything off planet, it is inefficient to bring the materials from earth. Yes, I know the article was billing this project as a way to get valuable metals for use here on Earth....but that strikes me as ridiculous...just something they tell the public to attract investment and positive attitudes. The real money is too far into the future after infrastructure is created.

Re:Considerable resources?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Seems like the only resource worth bringing down from the Moon would be one that just don't hardly exist down here.

Disregarding He3, the only point of lunar resources is for orbital/space construction. It is easier to reach LEO from the moon than from Earth. Reaction mass requirements for Lunar surface to LEO are much lower than from Earth surface.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Sperbels]

Nobody should have any qualms about mining anything on the Moon

Apparently you didn't see the shit-fit people were throwing several years ago when we deliberately crashed a probe into the moon to observe the composition of the regolith it kicked up. Dumping trash on the moon they said. Ridiculous, but there are apparently quite a few people on Slashdot who had this opinion.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very very little.
If there's anything that costs a lot to extract is due to scarcity, natural or artificial.
Most equipment is operated and maintained by humans. Which, as the population grows, the labor grows cheaper.
On the moon, they won't have the same benefit, so a lot of things will have to be designed well and built reliably on the first try AND made to run with very little, or no human supervision.

Re:Considerable resources?

[itzly]

But the stuff we want to put in Earth orbit is typically very high tech. How do you get from raw ore to microchips, solar panels, and high grade optics, without bringing it down to Earth surface first ? A microchip factory on Earth already costs billions of dollars, so the idea that anybody could afford to build one on the moon is just ludicrous.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Rinikusu]

All the dust you can eat!

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who feels they are ecologically conscious, I would tell them to stfu. Its a dead rock in space, we cant hurt it too badly, unless we completely destroy it.

Re:Considerable resources?

[CrimsonAvenger]

But the stuff we want to put in Earth orbit is typically very high tech. How do you get from raw ore to microchips, solar panels, and high grade optics, without bringing it down to Earth surface first ?

Well, no...

Yes, it's true that microchips aren't really feasible for building on the moon. On the other hand, microchips don't really weigh all that much, compared to, say, the box you put the microchips in. Or the ISS modules. Satellites are mostly aluminium and steel, not microchips.

If we only had to loft the computers and similar small items from Earth, while larger structures like whole ISS modules were built on the moon, expanding the ISS would be much cheaper.

Likewise, a Mars-bound spacecraft (manned or unmanned) would be cheaper to build if the structural elements were built from Lunar material (either on the moon or at the ISS) and only the high-tech parts were built on Earth.

Note that it's even possible to get reaction mass from the moon, if we can either find H2O or are willing to burn aluminium and oxygen (yah, Al2O3 is going to be some seriously abrasive reaction mass when it's pushed out a rocket nozzle, but we're only going to use it the once, right?

Hell, even if we can't find water, 80%+ of H2/O2 rocket fuel is the O2 part. And there's plenty of that to be had on the moon. Just lifting the H2 to LEO is a potential big savings.

Note, of course, that none of this is relevant unless we decide to get seriously into space again. If all we're ever going to do is send an occasional probe out, and build commsats/spysats/positioning-sats, the moon is completely irrelevant.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. The point of not littering the moon is NOT that the litter will cause ecological damage. The point of not littering the moon is NOT that the litter will be a sight that residents don't want to look at.

The point of not littering the moon is SYMBOLIC. The moon, and our exploration of it, is a symbol of our achievements. It is also a symbol of our sentience to other beings in the Universe.

So you see, when we litter the moon, it's like shitting all over our own achievements. It's also a warning sign to the Universe that we are irreverent and cannot be trusted. While you may feel that those things are true, I would prefer to not advertise them to all living things in existence.

Re:Considerable resources?

[itzly]

Note, of course, that none of this is relevant unless we decide to get seriously into space again.

Which isn't very likely. There's not much to do in space.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to? Baffling premise you have there.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Rei]

And lunar He-3 mining is pretty useless.

1) He-3 isn't all that useful. It has niche applications on earth in imaging, neutron detection, and so forth, but there's not really anything that would require bulk He-3 except for hypothetical He-3 fusion reactors.

2) There are no He-3 fusion reactors.

3) There's not going to be He-3 fusion reactors. It's a solution in search of a problem. We still struggle to get D-T fusion going which is orders of magnitude easier, why would we complicate the problem (and ridiculously raise the cost) just to reduce the short-term radioactivity (emphasis: short term) - radioactivity that we can actually *use* for useful breeding purposes? And if we really wanted to reduce radioactivity, we'd just skip He-3 and go straight to p-B fusion, which actually is effectively aneutronic, versus He3-D which is just low neutronicity..

4) Only low parts-per-thousand of the moon's helium is He-3. So unless you want to be sending huge quantities of helium back for a tiny bit of He3, you've got to do bloody isotope separation on the moon.

5) Only parts per million of the lunar regolith is helium. So you have to mine and bake a *lot* to get a very little amount of of helium. Which of that, only a tiny fraction is what you actually want (#4). Meanwhile, due to the cost of getting your consumables there, your labor and parts costs on any moon colony are going to be utterly absurd.

6) We can already make He-3 here on earth. It's a byproduct of tritium decay - tritium itself being breedable from lithium. Old nuclear weapons are for example often a source of He-3. Do you know what they do with it? For a long time, they were getting rid of it, converting it back to tritium. The market for making glowy paint for watches was more than the market for anything using He-3.

He-3 mining is an excuse to travel to the moon disguised in an economic wrapper.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, but so much of it is covered in dirt. No dirt on the moon. Much easier.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rock? Not cheese???

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not much to do in space.

This is true, if you are using the word "do" as a euphemism for "have sex with". Taken literally, however, the statement is myopic and unimaginative. For example, since there isn't much to "do" in space, I think we ought to start populating the surrounding systems with space hookers.

Re: Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the most important effect of the Moon is the way it stabilizes our rotation. Why would anyone mess with that? Seriously!

Re:Considerable resources?

[Sperbels]

What makes you thinks these other being in the universe aren't just as bad or worse. What makes you think these hypothetical other beings in the Universe are even watching? Hopefully you're not going to cite any alien abduction stories.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need advanced manufacturing on the moon. Once we have that, we can greatly reduce contaminations here on earth because we will be doing it on the moon. But in order to get the moon to that point, we need to start with the basics; Brinks from regolith. Refine mining and refining techniques on the moon. atonomize the processes.

Once that is done, then we can advance it further. But these things must happen in baby steps.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon belongs to nobody, so anybody can mine it. PERIOD

Re:Considerable resources?

[dkman]

It's more about the opinion that if you fuck up the moon you could very well destroy life on the planet. That said we're not likely to mine enough of the moon to mess things up that bad. But I don't trust a billionaire to care about performing that process in a non-damaging responsible way. Cutting corners and squeezing people may be how he made his billions (I didn't check). And if he did fuck thing up he wouldn't pay the price, "we" would.

Of course, using the moon as a base to build and launch things deeper into space makes perfect sense. If he helps get that process figured out it could do a lot of good for humanity.

Then we can spread like a disease across the solar system. For all the good we do this planet it's probably better for the universe if we die here.

Re:Considerable resources?

[k6mfw]

Great discussion and thanks for putting in time to explain He3 is a bankrupt reason for mining the moon.

Re:Considerable resources?

[kheldan]

That all sounds completely rediculous. If you follow that thinking then we'd better never do anything to 'disturb the natural order and beauty of the asteroid belt', and for that matter I guess we're being completely irresponsible, wasteful, and littering of the galaxy by allowing space probes like Voyager to wander around loose, right?

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that we would not want to build microchips on the moon has nothing to do with having to bring the materials back to earth. First the sun's radiation on the moon is much higher, thus we would have to send shielding which is already expensive to the moon which would make it even more expensive, unless we could find a natural source of shielding. Like the cave they discovered, however that would require a manned mission as machines have not yet become good enough at construction in unknown environments with out human assistance for that yet. Second the low gravity and vacuum environment would pose a problem because of quantum phenomena such as tin spikes, which would be deadly for delicate chips which often use tin in their construction. Lastly the temperature would be a huge issue, an most chips only work within a specific temperature range. So construction of chips would be a huge issue unless we could solve some relatively major problems, there may be a few chips we could manufacturer, but not many. I seriously doubt that it would be worth the investment.

However the moon does pose great potential for mining, and research. The moon had hundreds of meteor impacts that would be useful for determining the origins of our universe. The moon has mostly or completely cooled its core, making it ideal for mining deep within for heavy metals that will have settled near the core, and are imposable to gather here on earth due to our core temperatures. It is probably one of the best locations for a rare earth metals mine that we know of.

And lastly we could answer the age old problem of what would happen if someone were to fall through the earth, just drill a hole straight through and have someone jump in. Come on someone else must have thought of this.

Re:Considerable resources?

[MillionthMonkey]

Nobody should have any qualms about mining anything on the Moon since it has no ecosphere to start with.

Except for the part that involves producing and burning rocket fuel in Earth's ecosphere to lift mining equipment and return fuel. (I mean, you're joking, right?)

Re:Considerable resources?

[tnk1]

Oddly enough, when we're talking about aliens, they're more likely to know we were there by our trash on the Moon, than they would by us maintaining a nice pristine, clean moon.

Humans: "Don't shoot alien overlord! We are an advanced civilization too!"

Alien: "Uh, I really don't see that. Prove it."

Human: "We have gone to the Moon!"

Alien: "Bullshit. There's *nothing* there I could find"

Human: "Well there's a flag and some landers and a buggy or two. We tried to keep the place tidy".

Alien: "Your moon is the size of what you primates call a 'dwarf planet'. I'm not going looking for one flag on a planet, the very thought is ridiculous. You must think I am stupid. Prepare to die."

The End.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

but only the really CLASSY space hookers, right?

Re: Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or mixing lunar regolith powder into concrete to be extruded by a mobile 3d printing crane. Start building the base now before we send people up to live ther. Maybe the whole operation could be overseen by one lone technician.....

Re:Considerable resources?

[DanielRavenNest]

> There's not much to do in space.

Yeah, that's why space industry is only $300 billion/year and growing.

Re: Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey we can ship up all the nuclear waste material and stir it in specially contained areas on the far side where we can't see it. Then just have to carefully monitor for high levels of magnetic radiation.......

Re:Considerable resources?

[DanielRavenNest]

> And lunar He-3 mining is pretty useless.

There's another reason besides the ones you mention. Parts of the Moon have Thorium concentrations of 15 parts/million. That's about 1000 times higher than the He-3 concentration, and the energy output from fission isn't that much lower than fusion. Not to mention we know how to build Thorium reactors. So for a given amount of mining work, you would get more energy mining Thorium on the Moon. Now, considering that Thorium isn't terribly scarce on Earth, you can figure out that Lunar mining for Earth use isn't very sensible. And if you need power on the Moon, solar works much more easily. Nighttime power can be handled with solar-thermal. Vacuum makes a great insulator. Heat up a bunch of rocks with concentrated sunlight, then use that heat to run a generator at night. You will never run out of rocks on the Moon's surface, nor sunlight for that matter.

Re:Considerable resources?

[ceoyoyo]

Microchips are light. Water and oxygen are heavy, and we use a lot more of those in orbit than microchips. Aluminum might be kinda handy to have too.

Re:Considerable resources?

[spauldo]

I don't have any math to back me up, but I seriously doubt we'd be able to get anywhere near the core on the moon.

It's nothing to do with temperatures, it's the pressure. We've never managed to get close to the mantle here on earth because rock under that much pressure has some of the attributes of a viscous liquid. You'd think that would make the drilling easier, but it doesn't.

The moon has ~1/6th the gravity of the Earth, but it's still a long way down to the core. We could most likely drill much deeper than we could here on Earth, but getting all the way to the core isn't going to happen.

The mantle may be a possibility. Someone more familiar with the geology of the moon could comment on the mineral content of the lunar mantle.

We could try your experiement on one of Mars' moons, though.

Re:Considerable resources?

[spauldo]

It's easier to go to the moon than go much further down than we already have. There's a lot of unexplored sideways, though.

That said, while I'm not sure the moon holds anything that would be worth bringing back (as a commodity, not as research), asteroids do. The amount of gold and platinum group metals in the crust is limited. Certain types of asteroids carry those in abundance (they're where we got our gold and platinum from, after all - all the original heavy metals sank into the core when the Earth was still molten). There are forms of solids in asteroids that just don't form in a gravity well - the properties of which we know almost nothing about. Who knows what material researchers could do with them?

Mining asteroids wouldn't be cost effective at first, but once you scale it up it might be. Even if it's not, imagine if we found enough metals to double the amount of platinum we have access to (I've heard that by melting all the platinum in the crust, you could fill an olympic sized pool three inches. That's not a lot.). There are a lot of applications that could benefit from platinum, but we don't use because of the cost and low availability.

Back to the point, the true value of mining the moon would be the savings involved in getting mass into space. Set up some mining and basic factories on the moon, and fling the products into orbit with a mass driver. If we are to start building in space, we need the materials the moon can provide. Or we need a space elevator. Rockets just aren't cutting it.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, He3 exists on Earth too. It's about $1k/liter. I had some in my lab. I also had He4. It was a dual stage refrigerator.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may no have an ecosphere to disturb, but it still influences the tides. If we start ripping huge chunks of it off, what will happen to the tides?

Re:Considerable resources?

[arobatino]

From Barney Miller S07E18 Lady and the Bomb:

00:19:53 Okay, and then you and everybody else will go on making more and more.
00:19:57 And eventually you're gonna run out of places to put it, right?
00:20:00 That is a problem that we're trying to solve, and there are a number of long-range solutions.
00:20:06 Oh, yeah? yeah.
00:20:07 Opening new dump sites, use of salt domes, abandoned mines for long-term storage.
00:20:13 We may even find a permanent solution by rocketing our waste into space, out of the earth's atmosphere, traveling harmlessly out of our solar system.
00:20:25 And what if there's life out there that's not particularly interested in dealing with our garbage?
00:20:31 Well, then I guess they will just have to send it back.

Re:Considerable resources?

[WalksOnDirt]

The End? Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Re:Considerable resources?

[whopub]

It's all about finding the monolith...

Re:Considerable resources?

[tehcyder]

Seems like the only resource worth bringing down from the Moon would be one that just don't hardly exist down here...

"don't hardly" ?

Your English is pathetic.

Of course the cock-gobbling human waste who make up the majority of users on this increasingly useless website will mod me down for speaking the truth, so I may as well give them a reason : I hope all you faggots get AIDS.

Someone forgot to take their happy pills today.

Re:Considerable resources?

[gzuckier]

Seems like the only resource worth bringing down from the Moon would be one that just don't hardly exist down here...but if you were planning a long-term presence there, getting resources locally could be a lot cheaper than hauling them up.

Even so, the startup costs would be pretty intimidating.

They could ship vacuum down.

Re:Considerable resources?

[gzuckier]

But the stuff we want to put in Earth orbit is typically very high tech. How do you get from raw ore to microchips, solar panels, and high grade optics, without bringing it down to Earth surface first ? A microchip factory on Earth already costs billions of dollars, so the idea that anybody could afford to build one on the moon is just ludicrous.

Yeah but the kind of stuff they do in the station might be better on the moon. maybe the physical degradation will be less (on human physiology). probably be easier to assemble large interplanetary structures from subassemblies in lunar gravity than zero g.

Re:Considerable resources?

[Deadstick]

No, they make those right down here.

So much for international treaties

[MacDork]

n/t

Re: So much for international treaties

[chromeronin799]

Only matters if you signed them. Does anyone see China's signature on those treaties?

Paging Sam Bell...

[AuralityKev]

This may not turn out very well.

Re:Paging Sam Bell...

[taiwanjohn]

Moon-Ex CEO Bob Richards was on a panel at the International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) last October. He didn't break any "news" there, but gave a welcome update on the latest developments. Very interesting talk, worth a look.

Re:Paging Sam Bell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how vital this moon thing is to our entire existence on this planet, maybe we should kind of LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE.

Re:Paging Sam Bell...

[kevingolding2001]

I always wondered whether the one on earth knew about the others.

Re:Paging Sam Bell...

[tnk1]

It's the size of a small planet. Actually... it IS a small planet. It's not like we are pissing into a kiddie pool here, or disrupting a delicate piece of clockwork.

Doing more than making some scratches on the surface and just under it is unlikely to be within our capabilities for the foreseeable future.

Mine the moon? Really? got one word for you....

[Anonymous Coward]

Praxis

VERY cool news, BUT..

[kheldan]

..I think the real question on everyone's mind concerning Earth's moon is: Will the film adaptation of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress be good or bad?

In all seriousness: I think this is a positive first step towards humans going back to the moon. We really need to build a permanent base/colony there. Hey, Elon! Want to spearhead this one?

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[Anonymous Coward]

We really need to build a permanent base/colony there

And we should call it... Moonbase Alpha.

aeiou.

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[kheldan]

I dunno about that, friend, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain aren't looking too fit and healthy these days for a trip to the Moon. I'll go along with the idea, though, so long as no fucktard politician decides that the Moon is a good place to start storing nuclear waste.

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll wait for the Moon Zero Two reboot

It's about moon mining

and ... being weird

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno about that, friend, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain aren't looking too fit and healthy these days for a trip to the Moon. I'll go along with the idea, though, so long as no fucktard politician decides that the Moon is a good place to start storing nuclear waste.

Exactly storing nuclear waste is why we have the sun.

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[DanielRavenNest]

Parts of the Moon have natural concentrations of Thorium in the 10 ppm range. A little nuclear waste won't make a difference:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[tehcyder]

..I think the real question on everyone's mind concerning Earth's moon is: Will the film adaptation of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress be good or bad?

Well, as Starship Troopers showed, you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as long as you don't mind upsetting the people who think the sow is perfect as she is.

Re:VERY cool news, BUT..

[kheldan]

I don't think you get the reference; did you ever see the show we're talking about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's about Energy

[QuantumReality]

On Moon there is gas called helium 3, which 25 tons can provide power for whole USA for a year. On earth there is only about 10 kg of it. Who controls the moon, controls the future.

Re:It's about Energy

[Muad'Dave]

But "He Who Controls the Spice Controls the Universe!"

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is still fantasy. No one has a compelling idea about how to mine and refine helium3. The movie "Moon" only showed us a partial solution - robotic rovers, slugs of refined He3, and a stack of clones to avoid specialized training HR and costly transportation concerns. We still need a huge amount of infrastructure and a mining/refining technique that actually has a net energy payoff that's worth the effort.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 10kg is completely untrue. From wikipedia

"He is also present in the Earth's atmosphere. The natural abundance of 3He in naturally occurring helium gas is 1.38×106 (1.38 parts per million). The partial pressure of helium in the Earth's atmosphere is about 0.52 Pa, and thus helium accounts for 5.2 parts per million of the total pressure (101325 Pa) in the Earth's atmosphere, and 3He thus accounts for 7.2 parts per trillion of the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere of the Earth has a mass of about 5.14×1015 tonnes,[41] the mass of 3He in the Earth's atmosphere is the product of these numbers, or about 37,000 tonnes of 3He."

Re:It's about Energy

[poet]

As a follow up to this, here is an article:

http://phys.org/news166975298....

Re:It's about Energy

[itzly]

Concentration of He-3 on the moon is in the low ppb range. That means you'd have to process billions of tons of regolith to obtain the 25 tons of He-3.

Re:It's about Energy

[ShanghaiBill]

On Moon there is gas called helium 3

Helium 3 fusion is far more difficult than DT fusion. We aren't even close to commercial DT fusion. It is at least decades away, and He3 fusion is decades beyond that, if ever. Even if He3 fusion was working, getting it from the moon, where it is less than 50 ppb in the lunar regolith, is not realistic.

"Helium 3" has got to be the dumbest possible reason to mine the moon.

Re:It's about Energy

[fermion]

1. He3
2. ????
3. Profit

The missing step here is a practical fusion reactor.

The reason we need to think about industry on the moon is that if we are going to be a space faring culture, eventually, we need to have resources that are not locked up in the gravity well of the Earth. It is too expensive and is going to continue to be too expensive to life everything needed for space travel from the earths surface.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

About four billion tonnes a year, equal to the US and China's combined coal production.

On the moon.

Re:It's about Energy

[seven of five]

At least two or three schemes aim to do fusion with D-D or p-B11... they are more practical than the white elephant in France and make the helium 3 issue moot.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Helium 3" has got to be the dumbest possible reason to mine the moon.

Mining the Moon for Helium-3 will be the next Wall Street fraud supported by the politicians and the elite of society. I public hanging of a few politicians might restore a modicum of integrity by politicians. The terrorists won a greater victory than even they could have imagined possible in the wake of September 11, 2001. What is the difference between a Western Democracy and an Islamic State? In the Islamic State the people are armed against their government and willingly extinguish traitors. The extremist factions not withstanding.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians lie as easily as breathe ,as a necessary part of their job.

Killing a few will not change that. It might briefly change the public's perception of it, but that is the best case scenario.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete nonsense. This magical gas isn't stored in some canister hidden in a crater, it's a diffuse element present in low ppb. That's parts per billion. Assuming you could somehow make machinery that can autonomously suck up moon dust month after month and flawlessly seperate out this magical gas...

Well, now what? We have no fusion technology whatsoever.

And if you COULD mobilize the kind of vast resources to set up your Star Trek fantasy... we wouldn't HAVE an energy or resource problem in the first place!

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Commercial fusion is a few decades off...and always will be it seems.

Re:It's about Energy

[HiThere]

I think Jupiter is probably a better source of He3....or will be by the time we get around to having much use for it.

Of course, if we have fusion reactors we can probably breed it locally cheaper than importing it.
From Wikipedia:

Helium-3 is naturally present in small quantities due to radioactive decay, but virtually all helium-3 used in industry is manufactured. Helium-3 is a product of tritium decay, and tritium can be produced through neutron bombardment of deuterium, lithium, boron, or nitrogen targets.

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

On Moon there is gas called helium 3

Helium 3... getting it from the moon, where it is less than 50 ppb in the lunar regolith

In total or where they land?

Is it not much higher concentration on the "dark side", because of less protection from the earth's magnetic field?

Re:It's about Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget as humans we have a biological need for sunlight lest our mental and physical condition deteriorate to the point of madness. You might be a basement dwelling cockroach but most of us prefer living in the natural daylight. The Moon is incompatible with the human condition.

That's ok the moonlight will more than make up for it...

Re:It's about Energy

[dryeo]

Saturn would be better then Jupiter if we ever wanted to mine a gas giants atmosphere, much less radiation.

Re:It's about Energy

[tehcyder]

Your 10kg is completely untrue. From wikipedia

"He is also present in the Earth's atmosphere. The natural abundance of 3He in naturally occurring helium gas is 1.38×106 (1.38 parts per million). The partial pressure of helium in the Earth's atmosphere is about 0.52 Pa, and thus helium accounts for 5.2 parts per million of the total pressure (101325 Pa) in the Earth's atmosphere, and 3He thus accounts for 7.2 parts per trillion of the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere of the Earth has a mass of about 5.14×1015 tonnes,[41] the mass of 3He in the Earth's atmosphere is the product of these numbers, or about 37,000 tonnes of 3He."

Give the guy a break, he was only out by a factor of almost four million.

Re:It's about Energy

[tehcyder]

Commercial fusion is a few decades off...and always will be it seems.

No, it's definitely coming within our lifetimes. I read an article the other day which explained how there would be a working prototype fusion reactor within ten to twenty years, and effectively unlimited energy within forty or so.

If the people spending billions on research facilities can't be trusted to predict the future, who can?

Re:It's about Energy

[tehcyder]

You forget as humans we have a biological need for sunlight lest our mental and physical condition deteriorate to the point of madness. You might be a basement dwelling cockroach but most of us prefer living in the natural daylight.

You're not going to get much sympathy on slashdot with crazy talk like that.

There are plenty of people here who would volunteer for a one way trip to Mars in a windowless tin can and the prospect of living in a cave until they died.

Seawater?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are millions of tons (literally) of valuable metals in seawater....

going to the moon for them seems like an investor scam

Re: Seawater?

[Gizan]

There are many metals that are not rediliy avilible on earth in large quantities that are for industrial use. Some of them are from asteroida that have hit the earth. The moon no having an atmosphere means they don't burn up on entry..

Re:Seawater?

[Bengie]

A quick google returned stuff like "Moon rocks have 10x more titanium than Earth rocks". The moon having 10% titanium compared to Earths 1% is only one example of high rare mineral concentrations. An no environment issues to worry about.

Re:Seawater?

[itzly]

Most of the cost of using titanium is actually processing the material into the desired shape. It's a total bitch to work with.

Re:Seawater?

[blackanvil]

Actually, no. It works just fine, you can hot-forge it much like iron (really, I've done it, when its glowing it moves under a hammer much like iron does), machining it requires tungsten carbide tooling but most people use that anyway, and you don't have to worry about heat-treatment, the stuff will be just as hard as mild steel (RC52ish) no matter what you do to it. The real cost is creation: converting titianium dioxide to metallic titanium on a commercial basis is complex, takes a lot of energy, and results in a material that doesn't melt until it gets over 3000F, but must be alloyed (melted and mixed with other elements) to be usable. The cost of the raw material is almost irrelevant -- TiO2 is used in virtually every modern paint (to the extent that it's a standard test for forgery detection on art, unless you're compounding your own paint from linseed oil and powdered minerals, it's probably got titanium dioxide in it).

Re:Seawater?

[Bengie]

My main point is some "rare Earth" minerals may not be so rare on the Moon.

Re:Seawater?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

They're not even rare on the Earth.

Return mined material to Earth?

[johnnys]

If you think the Keystone pipeline is Bad, consider a few thousand tons of some mined material from the moon coming into the atmosphere at ~17,000 mph.

(sarcasm)What could go wrong?(/sarcasm)

Re:Return mined material to Earth?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You'll be ok as long as you don't name it the Mycroft 3000.

Strike that. Please name it the Mycroft 3000.

Re:Return mined material to Earth?

[neminem]

The point isn't to mine material and send it to earth. The point is to mine material and then *keep it in space*, to do things with that would be astronomically (heh) expensive to do if we had to lift all the material up from earth first.

Re:Return mined material to Earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come now leave them be, there is no reason to confuse them with facts and ideas he has fear on his side. At work we call that behavior "lobster bucketing". Its not that they really have these 1001 fears about anything that anyone might try doing. Its just that they don't want anyone to do anything so they are going to raise objections to anything. They are like a bunch of lobsters in a bucket, as soon as one tries to go somewhere they pull him back.

Re:Return mined material to Earth?

[cwsumner]

If you think the Keystone pipeline is Bad, consider a few thousand tons of some mined material from the moon coming into the atmosphere at ~17,000 mph.

(sarcasm)What could go wrong?(/sarcasm)

Thanks for the "sarcasm" tags. They actually do help! 8-)

I'm no Seleneologist but....

[onkelonkel]

I'm no Seleneologist nor am I a Geologist, but what exactly is up there that we can't get down here in larger quantities for much less money? No sarcasm intended, I'm honestly curious..

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Muad'Dave]

In a word, Helium3.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

We have no use for He-3 in the foreseeable future, though. And if we really need it, we can synthesize it.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Greyfox]

It's not so much what we can get in larger quantities down here. It's getting larger quantities into space for other projects. One you bootstrap some manufacturing in space, you can just start building there. At that point, why build anything that's going to end up in space down at the bottom of the gravity well? Just pull resources from the moon and passing asteroids. Once you have a solid established presence outside the gravity well, getting around the rest of the solar system is pretty easy.

In the near term if you're making unique things that zero gravity allows, it's a lot easier to get stuff back into the gravity well than it is to go the other way. So you make your zero-g-manufactured gizmos and drop 'em back into the gravity well to sell them. At some point you should also have a decent economy in space as well.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[jeffb (2.718)]

Metals and oxygen, ready to be chemically separated... already outside of Earth's gravity well, and therefore not incurring the energy costs, environmental issues, and safety concerns of launching them from Earth's sea level. That's kind of a big deal, if you want to start large-scale construction in space.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

it's a lot easier to get stuff back into the gravity well than it is to go the other way

That depends on the circumstances. It easier on Earth because it has a nice atmosphere that allows aerobraking. Not so easy on Mars or the Moon. Also landing on Earth becomes more difficult as the mass increases.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Greyfox]

True, it would be difficult to drop a 25 ton shipping container to Earth, but you could probably wrap a single customer's order in bubble wrap, fire it out of the Amazon.com Customer Order Mass Accelerator(tm) at just the right moment and have it whang into the guy's head shortly after reentry! Bwahahaha!

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[GroeFaZ]

If we will ever have large-scale use for Helium 3, it will be for power generation. In which case synthesizing it would make it merely a form of energy storage like hydrogen.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

No, synthesizing would be a positive net energy procedure. You can irrradiate lithium-6, to make tritium. Store the tritium, and it would decay into He-3.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[jeffmeden]

In a word, Helium3.

Even if it were useful, it turns out that it's available in modest form in extracted natural gas and other deep pocketed materials. If we had a use for a whole lot of it maybe getting it from the moon is practical but that can only come after we have a use for the amount already here, which won't be for a long time. Considering it's measured in the parts per billion in lunar soil you would need a hell of a refining plant to get a significant quantity.

The only hope of profit from this sort of "expedition" is to come across a few of the fabled solid platinum meteors and come back with a whopper (platinum is currently valued at $3,500,000 per hundred kg)

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[chriscrowley]

A moon rock is supposed to cost ~$50,800/g*. A quick Google search shows that platinum costs $35.85/g and gold costs $37/g.
The most valuable thing on the moon are the rocks themselves. I guess their price will come down dramatically if mining begins and there becomes a legal moon rock market.

* - http://www.space.com/11804-nas...

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now THAT is the first real reason I've heard in this whole thread.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Muad'Dave]

No current power generation use. It's used for medical lung imaging today.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

And even we could extract it from such a hostile environment.... what the hell for? Party balloons?

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

nukular plants already store tritium and make He-3

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[snadrus]

Good point: It's a multi-step thing.
- Entrepreneurs get cheap moon rocks
- Build Moon infrastructure
- Use somebody's plan to make it worth it.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Space Nutter. Logic is no use here, rather, think "religion" and you'll understand their motivations better.

Space Nutters honestly think that the entire human species is destined (destined, I tell you!) to colonize the deadly vacuum out there.

The goal of large-scale construction in space is the large-scale construction in space. The fact that the best we can do is a kind of international tree fort in the upper atmosphere means nothing to people raised on sci-fi.

3D printers and better computers automatically means large-scale space colonization, even though we don't even have the Concorde anymore. But hey. space!

www.distancetomars.com

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[painandgreed]

What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?

Well, nobody is mining anything in space any time soon. Anything like this project done now is pretty much pure research that would only begin to tell us what we'd even need to mine something on the moon and manufacture it in space. Then after information is gathered, tests are done, they can figure out what it would actually take and put together cost analysis of such a project.

Well, as for large scale constructions in space, there are a couple of ways it could conceivably come about. One is that simply due to our interest in space and our growing population and economy, the amount of money set aside for space exploration would be enough. At some point, there would be a point at which we'd save money and effort by completing mining and manufacturing efforts in space and there will be a reason of pure economy for things we are already doing. This probably includes any attempt to explore and send people to the Moon or Mars. Another would be power. Eventually, we'll run out of fossil fuels, nuclear will be mined to the point it is harder to get. Hydro will be maxed out and we'll be reliant on solar for our energy needs. The amount of solar energy that hits the earth is trivial compared to what is out there in space. We could move to space for the energy, either to send back to earth or just to power manufacturing sites we put out there in space due to plentiful energy that if not cheaper, will at least be available compared to what is on Earth. Once that begins, there will be infrastructure as well as other demands for things like mining and manufacturing that will require some human presence, which will require more power and infrastructure. At a certain point, space will just be colonized as the population's children will just be able to stay there. Either way, I wouldn't expect serious mining and manufacturing of metals in space for a few centuries yet.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

It would be smarter to control the population growth and the amount of energy required. You have to do that anyway. You can't keep feeding an exponentially growing population forever. So, if you stop the growth at a sustainable point, there's no need to get stuff from space.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?

Maybe building an Interstellar Arc in case there is a large scale planet-wide calamity like a large asteroid, it helps to build something like that before the disater occurs.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[jeffb (2.718)]

Ah, QA. How we miss you back over at Fark.

I'm not surprised that your... enthusiasm?... led you to miss the word "if" in my post. I'm not making the case that we should drop everything and Build Things In Space; I'm simply answering the question "what can we get up there that we can't get more cheaply down here", and proposing one hypothetical situation where that would matter.

Now, as it turns out, I do think we'd be wise as a species to start spreading out, and I don't think that leaving Earth's biosphere will be an immediate death sentence in perpetuity (so yes, I suppose I've earned your contempt). But I don't see significant progress in that direction happening in my lifetime, and I've made my peace with that. Pleasant surprises are still welcome, though -- like rich folks putting their disposable income toward this, instead of building another mega-yacht or trying to corner the world market for iWatches. Is there anything that pleasantly surprises you these days, or is your attention entirely consumed by threads about 3D printers and space?

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[painandgreed]

It would be smarter to control the population growth and the amount of energy required. You have to do that anyway. You can't keep feeding an exponentially growing population forever. So, if you stop the growth at a sustainable point, there's no need to get stuff from space.

Do you really expect people do the smartest thing? Our sustainable point is determined by our access to energy. By time we get to that point, we'll probably already be in space and past the point of economic benefit of getting material from there.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[itzly]

Do you really expect people do the smartest thing?

If you call genocide smart, yes.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

"or is your attention entirely consumed by threads about 3D printers and space?"

No, it's the psychology of naive hope among a certain crowd, who should know better. It's mind-boggling to me, like a religious physicist, or neurosurgeon that believes in the afterlife.

It's not the 3D printers or space stations, it's the people, their delusions, and how (or why) they cling to them despite mountains, nay, asteroids, of evidence to the contrary.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't keep feeding an exponentially growing population forever.

I don't actually know that this is true. It is conceivable that you could feed a 1% year-over-year exponentially growing population until the heat death of the universe.

We already produce 10B people worth of food (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-holt-gimenez/world-hunger_b_1463429.html), to feed 7B people. Assuming that no one makes anymore food (unlikely) and that there are no farming inventions (unlikely) for the next 35 years, we can feed a 1% growth. Given that the planet is expected to have 1% growth this year (https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/images/worldgr.png), it seems as though we are safe from overconsumption (of food) for a least a while (over 50 years at current production).

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Kjella]

But of course you're now in the Moon's gravity well, which is something like 1/5th of Earth's. Which is a fair advantage if you can build and fuel rockets on the Moon, but launching rockets from Earth to the Moon in order to re-launch from the moon would dwarf those savings. And I don't think moving the whole high-tech supply chain for that is possible, at least not in the next century. So I think you need many things to happen in order to make it even remotely feasible:

1) Reusable rockets, if you can launch once from Earth and do 30 moon-space launches you might have a chance.
2) You need to produce the fuel on site at a reasonable cost compared to earth
3) You need to be able to mine the metals you want at a reasonable cost compared to earth.
4) For more than bulk minerals/metals, you need manufacturing on the moon or in space at a reasonable cost.

The Falcon Heavy will launch 21200 kg to GEO for $85 million, that's $4000/kg. The first point would lower the cost of Earth-based launches too, so you're probably looking at less than $1000/kg. We're not talking about rovers processing a few grams of scientific samples here, what would it cost to mine and refine 20 tons of material, 100t+ of fuel (earth to GEO is 70:1 fuel, 5:1 is very kind), transport it to the launch site and get it into orbit? <$100m from earth looks like a bargain since the materials add almost nothing to the cost here, to me doing it on the moon sounds like a project that'll cost many, many billions.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[spauldo]

1) You don't need rockets to launch from the moon. A mass driver would do the trick nicely, and only require electricity. Plenty of sunlight on the moon.
2) Solar, for above
3) Not really. You need to be able to mine them and put them into space for a reasonable cost compared to Earth. It's the "put them into space" that's expensive.
4) Adjust that to add the cost to launch into space, but true nonetheless. We won't be putting semiconductor fabs on the moon any time soon. Things like concrete, on the other hand, would likely turn out cost effective. We don't build space stations with a lot of mass because of the cost to put that mass up there.

Cheaper rockets are a good thing, and will be necessary if we're to put anything permanant on the moon, but the moon is still required if we are ever to do any sort of large-scale construction in space.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you say that (other than being short sighted)? Sustainability is a scared old mans dream. Over a significant period of time nothing is sustainable, so adaptability is what we should strive for. We should dream to expand, explore and populate. At an estimated mass of 1.3e52 lbs there is a huge amount of matter in the universe. The weight of humanity is currently 6e11lbs. and that of the entire solar system is about 2e30lbs making us about 3e-17% of matter. If we were to populate the universe to such an extent we would take something on the order of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times our current population. Our biggest limitations are our own fear and laziness.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[tehcyder]

The only hope of profit from this sort of "expedition" is to come across a few of the fabled solid platinum meteors and come back with a whopper

Space Nutter translation : so, it's not completely impossible then?

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[tehcyder]

True, it would be difficult to drop a 25 ton shipping container to Earth

Only if you were worried about where it landed.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[tehcyder]

What's the goal of large-scale construction in space though ? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until there's actually a market for the stuff you'd want to mine before going to the moon to get it ?

Maybe building an Interstellar Arc in case there is a large scale planet-wide calamity like a large asteroid, it helps to build something like that before the disater occurs.

But we don't have anywhere to go in our Interstellar Arc. You would simply be condemning the remainder of humanity to futility and madness as they drifted in appalling conditions aimlessly, for ever.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[david_thornley]

Try calculating the point at which 1% annual growth turns into a solid ball of humanity growing at near-light speeds. It's pretty much immediate on geological or astronomical time scales.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[sysrammer]

It seems that the most effective ways to limit humanity's growth are war, disease, starvation, and draconian control. Often all four things at the same time. I can't think of a method that doesn't fall under these categories.

Education? Maybe. At what point does education become propaganda? At what point does propaganda become brain-washing? At what point does brain-washing become draconian control?

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[sysrammer]

It would be smarter to control the population growth and the amount of energy required. ...

Do you really expect people do the smartest thing? ...

I'll mangle Churchill here: Humanity will always do the right thing...after all other options are tried.

Re:I'm no Seleneologist but....

[sysrammer]

Just about everything is immediate regarding humanity on geological or astronomical time scales.

--
"I replied to this posting mainly to riff off the other guy's signature" - Sun Tzu

2037

[INeededALogin]

All I can think of is this scene

"Thats Impossible!"

what happens when.....

[Anonymous Coward]

the moon loses too much mass from mining and the earth gains that mass from being the recipient of those mined resources?

Re:what happens when.....

[Tablizer]

the moon loses too much mass from mining and the earth gains that mass from being the recipient of those mined resources?

The usual: moon complains that its partner is obese and breaks off the relationship.

Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[King_TJ]

I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?

It just seems to me that although right now, people might think it obvious that whoever spends all the money and effort to get there and retrieve a substance should have the rights to it -- what happens when this process gets cheaper and easier to do? Will people who arrive there try to stake a claim for a certain number of square kilometers of the moon as "their work area" and fight about it if someone extracts helium 3 or something else while on their claimed area?

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[CaptainLard]

Is it "first come, first to profit"?

For the foreseeable future, I'd think not....more like 3rd to merge assets of 4 failed startups might profit.

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[braindrainbahrain]

http://www.victorypointgames.c...

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[ADRA]

The only outcome will be peaceful and relatively fair compomise or war. So depending on which aspect favors the parties in contention, either of them are likely possibilities.

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[jdschulteis]

I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?

The Outer Space Treaty

Article II: "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."

Article I says, in part, "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law". I would look to maritime law regarding resources in international waters as a basis for how lunar resources might be handled.

Article VI says, in part, "States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty." Since this is a US company they will need authorization from and supervision by the federal government.

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[gnupun]

Article I says, in part, "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law".

Since the article says that no govt owns it, which is bullshit, I think (since the world is a democracy and not a plutocracy). And since the common man has no resources to go to the moon, let alone mine it and transport the minerals back to earth. Can we safely assume, the treaty favors businessmen of first-world countries who will use public resources to mine the minerals but keep the profits to themselves? In other words, the law is extremely unfair and biased.

What would be fair is all the govts divvy up the resources by country size, GDP and other means. Furthermore, while the miners should get the lion's share of the minerals, the citizens of all involved countries should also get rights to a fraction of the minerals mined.

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[jdschulteis]

Can we safely assume, the treaty favors businessmen of first-world countries who will use public resources to mine the minerals but keep the profits to themselves?

I'm sure we can trust the government to prevent such abuses.

I didn't post the link earlier, but the International Seabed Authority already exists to regulate mining of the seabed, including in international waters. I expect lunar and asteroid mining to fall under a similar authority. (Assuming either ever becomes practical.)

Re:Who has the rights to the moon's resources?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

In other words, the law is extremely unfair and biased.

If you believe that this law is unfair/biased in the favor of mining companies, I suggest that you start one.

The laws are structured in the same manner as many others: if you can take it, its yours. The oil in the middle of the Pacific doesn't go to "the citizens of all involved countries [on the planet]", it goes to the first to claim it. The "gold in them hills" belongs to the first to grab it.

High-Beta Fusion

[xdor]

If the SkunkWorks claim is legit about having a working idea for a practical High-Beta Fusion reactor, the by-product of that reaction is Helium-3. So:

1. We don't need a Helium-3/Thorium reactor
2. If we did, the High Beta reactor could produce the Helium 3 for it

The added nifty-ness of SkunkWork's reactor is that a requires Tritium: a by-product of existing nuclear fission reactors! So cleans up existing nuclear waste (waste-water, anyway) and creates energy and creates Helium-3! Almost too good to be true...

Don't really know why you need to go to the moon for Helium-3 if you can make it while generating power. Of course if we need copper or gallium arsenide or something and the moon has it, maybe that's worth it too.

If it only were legal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: Can any State claim a part of outer space as its own?
A: No. The Outer Space Treaty states that outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. The Treaty establishes the exploration and use of outer space as the "province of all mankind." The Moon Agreement expands on these provisions by stating that neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof, or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person.

http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/FAQ/splawfaq.html#Q6 (United Nations, Office for Outer Space Affairs).

ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[Grey Geezer]

so much more useful? Or maybe even the lagrange points?

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[digsbo]

Launch cost.

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[itzly]

As Musk argues, launch cost are high because our rockets are not reusable. The fuel is only a small part of the overall cost. So, instead of trying to get stuff from the moon, it would make much more sense to develop reusable rockets, like SpaceX is doing.

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[digsbo]

That assumes the costs of reusable HEO launch rockets aren't multiples of reusable LEO launch rockets. Admittedly, I don't know squat about it, but I'd speculate that higher altitude launch systems require additional engineering and face additional stresses that would still make costs higher.

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[itzly]

At least you can reuse the first stage, which is the biggest and most expensive one.

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[Anonymous Coward]

And they need to be able to take off and land with minimal support structure, so existing airports and runways will save a lot of money.

Re:ReWhy LEO when Geosynchronous is often

[Grey Geezer]

No. If it's coming from the moon you can put it into any (Earth) orbit you want, at just about the same cost....Can't you?

How to become a space millionaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start as a billionaire. This is a non-starter idea. Rich people can be as wrong and deluded as anyone else, see: Howard Hughes.

Re:How to become a space millionaire?

[CaptainLard]

Someone who's estate was worth $2.5B when he died is probably not the best example to prove your point.

Re:How to become a space millionaire?

[tehcyder]

Rich people can be as wrong and deluded as anyone else, see: Howard Hughes.

Someone who's estate was worth $2.5B when he died is probably not the best example to prove your point.

He is a perfect example of how you don't get to be right simply by having a lot of money.

Whatever capitalists like to believe, being rich is not a sign that you are a good, wise, admirable or pleasant human being. It is a sign that you have a lot of money.

To answer everyone's question

[jbmartin6]

From TFA:

Helping to drive this newfound interest in privately funded space exploration is the Google Lunar X Prize. It's a competition organized by the X Prize Foundation and sponsored by Google that will award $30 million to the first company that lands a commercial spacecraft on the moon, travels 500 meters across its surface and sends high-definition images and video back to Earth—all before the end of 2016.

Yeah, it's hollow so good luck

[stackOVFL]

Read the first comment by oemii: https://moonconspiracy.wordpre...

Re:Yeah, it's hollow so good luck

[dcollins117]

Well, that was mildly entertaining, and not the craziest thing I've read on the internet. Comes close, though :)

Re:Yeah, it's hollow so good luck

[tehcyder]

Well, that was mildly entertaining, and not the craziest thing I've read on the internet. Comes close, though :)

It's really not in the Time Cube league though, as it is actually comprehensible. Sounds like an L Ron Hubbard story to me.

I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Rinikusu]

"what's up there? This is stupid!"

Seriously, turn in your geek cards, every fucking one of you. I don't care what's up there, if someone wants to put a fucking space colony on the moon, FUCKING AWESOME. We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit, even if that shit fails and blows a lot of money, because we can learn from those failures and keep trying.

Seriously, it's like I just stumbled into high school again. "Who needs math, math is stupid! Why do you read science fiction, that's stupid!" Fuck off, some of us have dreams.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[itzly]

Fuck off, some of us have dreams.

As long as these dreams are paid with private funds, go right ahead.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[snadrus]

+1

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[stackOVFL]

Decaf or bennyies either one will work for you

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you willing to give up public financing of your dreams that aren't universally supported? Or even those that are just not majority supported?

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[itzly]

I don't have much control over public funds, but I would prefer as much as possible is diverted to my personal interests, of course.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Geek doesn't mean "naive, wide-eyed dreamer". You are a Space Nutter and belong in a church, not a geek website.

Every single piece of scientific and engineering information shows that space is a no-go for the kind of grandiose fantasies you cling to.

http://www.distancetomars.com/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...

"if someone wants to put a fucking space colony on the moon, FUCKING AWESOME."

Egyptians 5000 years ago built really fucking awesome tombstones. So?

" We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit, "

Well that solves that! BTW, for the curious, "get off this rock" is a Space Nutter dog whistle. You hear that, and pretty soon you'll a bunch of unrealistic naive dreamers show up with the "species" and the "asteroid of doom".

99% of these people are depressed, misanthropic programmers, ie the last people on Earth you should listen to for what's realistic in the real world.

"Fuck off, some of us have dreams."

Oddly, you always have exactly the same dream, the dream of the 1960s Space Age sci-fi, which itself was driven by Russian Cosmism mysticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Where are the life extension dreamers? Where are the leisure society dreamers?

Your "dream" is basically the past of the USA, but with rockets.

Grow up, nutcase. Go talk to a girl or something.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's all part of our Obamazation. We're supposed to murder our dreams and concentrate on everything that's bad. Aspire to something better? That's racist!

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[MattskEE]

I'm all for exploring space, but the premise of mining the moon sounds pretty shaky and its totally fair for geeks to want realistic goals because that's what attracts sustainable capital investment from public and private sources that are needed to realize the goal. It's not a zero-sum game, but putting private and public money into crazy unworkable ideas takes some money away from realistic ideas.

Moon mining sounds to me a lot like orbital solar power - it sounds great and cool until you actually think for a moment and realize that it has very little to no net benefit per panel area compared to terrestrial solar after you transmit the power back to earth, and the cost is astronomical to boot. What is the benefit of mining the moon aside from sounding cool? It doesn't seem like there's a particularly high concentration of any of these purported mineral riches and with the expense of mining the material in space I'm highly suspicious of it being in any way economical after shipping back to Earth. He-3 is a bust since there's currently no major use for it. Maybe moon mining would be viable for obtaining materials on the moon without launch costs, but the supposed mineral riches are mostly high priced specialty materials and not the boring metals like iron and aluminum that would be needed for building a spaceship or lunar colony.

Fuck off, some of us have dreams.

Some of us like to support our dreams with back of the envelope analyses to ensure viability before getting too invested in them.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Trailer Trash]

Seriously, it's like I just stumbled into high school again. "Who needs math, math is stupid! Why do you read science fiction, that's stupid!" Fuck off, some of us have dreams.

Actually, reading through all that I was thinking of "why do you need a faster internet connection?" The answer is "I'll know when I get it".

Same thing with the moon. Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[itzly]

Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.

The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward. At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[bill_mcgonigle]

the supposed mineral riches are mostly high priced specialty materials and not the boring metals like iron and aluminum

Huh? The moon has gigatons of common metals and many of the areas are especially aluminum rich (and titanium to a lesser degree).

The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well. Whether that's Earth geosync or a LaGrange point, or something else, the challenges are along the lines of having enough utility stock (for doing the Bayer Process, e.g.) - there's plenty of sunlight to make the needed electricity.

The moon process will likely be different than the Earth process, in the end. For instance, all that oxygen that needs to be liberated from AL(2)0(3) can be stored for useful purposes. Even if at first you're storing the separated aluminum for future use, it might still be the best way to make oxygen for those fussy humans to breathe, if you look at the long-term cost/benefit. I seem to recall the University of AZ had a whole system worked out in the 90's and demonstrated using near-analogues to moon rock in big vacuum chamber. Undoubtedly a 2015 plan involves several generations of 3D printers that can eventually be used to print more moon base.

But, yeah, having a H3-H2 reactor would make it much more efficient, but solar or RTG will have to do in the short-term. It's quite the bootstrapping problem. Once you have a major factory complex up and running for safe habitation and flexible manufacturing, you're ready to set the AI's out building more structures night and day, and that's when you get polynomial expansion.

Barring government interference, I fully expect to see moon habitation visible from Earth in my lifetime (the NIMBYs will complain that it should be on the dark side).

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[SparkleMotion88]

We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit...

Yeah, but it will be a lot easier once we have replaced ourselves with robots. We might as well just wait and explore the universe after that happens.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[itzly]

The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well

You mean, much higher cost. When you add all the expenses of building a factory on the moon that can turn raw rocks into useful structures (not just dirty iron bars), and you divide that over the amount of stuff we would like to have in orbit, the cost is going to be several orders of magnitude more than just launching from the Earth.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you need a hug? You sound like you need a hug.

Come over here, I'll give you a hug. You poor dear.

Hug.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ol' Bill there is a 100% rabid Space Nutter, who lost contact with reality decades ago.

The kind of magical technology you'd need to achieve his fever dreams of mining the Moon, well, you just use them right here !!!

Check this gem out:
"Barring government interference, I fully expect to see moon habitation visible from Earth in my lifetime (the NIMBYs will complain that it should be on the dark side)."

Yes, the big bad government standing in the way of brave capitalists, who just want to mine the Moon!

It's not physics or engineering that's the barrier. No no!

It's the big bad government, the only ones who ever got people to the Moon in the first place, always "interfering"!!!

Any wonder I think Space Nutters are mentally ill? And I mean that, I'm not just throwing words around, I think they'd be diagnosed if I had the money to get professionals to look at them.

Also, take a look at his sig, another programmer? It's always programmers who have the most absurd scenarios about space. Look at how he just casually throws around big concepts and non-existent technologies; programmers think that physical reality is just like typing apt-get... This is probably why they have the most grandiose visions about space, they think it's like a video game!

apt-get he3fusion
apt-get space elevator
apt-get get off this rock
apt-get warp drive

bahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward.

Okay, I'll bite. How many more quadrillions of dollars worth of useful minerals outside most of earth's gravity well does the moon need for the reward to be more than 'possibly very little'?

At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.

This fallacious argument, again...

Having roughly seven billion people on the planet means we can do both of these things and still have money and manpower left over to do the other several million things people would like to do.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Over a long period of time, marginal cost is the most important measure, and when it comes to delivering bulk material to orbit much of that marginal cost is in the launch. Also, while there's no demand for orbiting aluminum at the current $10K/kg, there would be plenty at $100/kg because at that rate it becomes a building material for space infrastructure.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[tehcyder]

I love science fiction and dream about time travel. That doesn't mean it is ever going to happen.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[tehcyder]

Your "dream" is basically the past of the USA, but with rockets.

Nice one.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[tehcyder]

Barring government interference, I fully expect to see moon habitation visible from Earth in my lifetime

There is a very high correlation between being a libertarian and being a space nutter.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[tehcyder]

Actually, reading through all that I was thinking of "why do you need a faster internet connection?" The answer is "I'll know when I get it".

No, the answer is "you don't, not really, and certainly not unless it's affordable."

Same thing with the moon. Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.

If it all leads to some genuine scientific breakthrough, fair enough. But there's a danger of using the argument that, because wars generally spur on technological innovation, therefore it's a good idea to be permanently at war in order to maximise technological improvements.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[tehcyder]

We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit...

Yeah, but it will be a lot easier once we have replaced ourselves with robots. We might as well just wait and explore the universe after that happens.

But by then we'll have discovered the secret of infinite power generation, instantaneous matter transfer, eternal life and time travel, so we won't need to physically travel from one place to another anyway.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[david_thornley]

Building a factory will be really expensive, but somebody may think it's worth it, and even if they're wrong and it's uneconomical the new owners will have a lot less debt to amortize after the bankruptcy proceedings.

You're also way underestimating the demand for metal in orbit. There's a lot of stuff we'd like to put into orbit if it were a lot less expensive, and we'll find other uses for stuff in space. Right now, getting aluminum things into orbit is way expensive, so we only put relatively few things there, and it's not worth experimenting with a lot of ideas that wouldn't be economical at current cost-to-orbit no matter what. If computers still cost what they did when I was young, there'd be tremendously fewer of them, and there would be a very large number of computer applications that would simply not happen, and the total amount spent on computers would be far smaller. Same with the cost of stuff to orbit.

Re:I'm disappointed in my fellow geeks

[cwsumner]

All these objections sound like the 1960's, when people were asking why anyone would want a personal computer or a car phone (2ft square in the trunk of the car). Obviously they were not actually good for anything and never would be!

I read science fiction and had some idea, so you geeks should now, too.

Sure, I wasn't ready for a carry-around phone at that time. Lugging it around on my back did not sound good. And the home computers did not even have a screen and keyboard. But you would be amazed how fast they had some that were practical, if a bit pricey.

By the time these people are ready to go, there will probably be people there to buy what they make. Today doesn't matter for that, they aren't ready to start yet anyway. And whatever you think the world is like, the only thing you know about the future is that it will be different (mostly). I know, I've seen it change already... 8-)

Another Glomar Explorer

[fhage]

Sounds just like Howard Hughes going off to collect manganese nodules from the ocean floor.

I want to know the real purpose. Was a strange obelisk discovered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?

Are we developing Lunar Rods from God capability?

/s

Re:Another Glomar Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, this billionaire is duping the US government into funding the excavation for his lunar bunker from which he will rule the Earth.

This can't be true....

[Anonymous Coward]

...because we have all heard the Greens assuring us that we only have the resources of this planet to live on, and when they are used up we will die.

Re:This can't be true....

[spauldo]

You will still be here, so they're still right.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A nuclear powerplant on the moon went critical today, pushing the moon towards escape velocity.
NASA analysts state that the push will send the moon on a collision course with Mars.

I think

[chasm22]

The CEO of Moon Express said, "The MX-1 is the iPhone of space...".

I guess the contest is over. Who would've thunk it. Next big decision for them is how to work a small i into the company name.

Mining... what? Come on, editors.

[Wootery]

The summary doesn't even contain the word 'mine'.

It's an old custom to whine about Slashdot editing, I admit, but really now.

Re:Mining... what? Come on, editors.

[itzly]

It's talking about tapping into its considerable resources. That's mining, isn't it ?

Mining the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like just the nonsense needed to justify a big increase in the NASA budget. Let's throw in that the Chinese, Indians and Russians are all headed to the moon these days too. Do we really want to let the Chinks and Russkies raining down moon mining tailings on us? Finally, a reason for building SLS! So, 6 years after cancelling the Constellation program we get it back!!

Seriously, I am all for building a lunar base, lunar telescopes, lunar colonies, lunar what have you.

Seen the Movie, Read the book...

[Taelron]

This doesnt pan out (H.G.) Wells for us...

Poor Person Teams Up With NASA To Mine the Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

You would almost thing that being a billionaire would be a requirement to team up with NASA to make money.

Moon Graffiti

[wasteoid]

When are we going to see CHA enscribed on the moon's surface?

O3 Baby

[Anonymous Coward]

For the mining of O3 the only commercially viable substance. Theoreticlay the best fuel for a breeder reactor, The first successful test just a few years ago and dominating space to capture the market on the resource is undoubtedly a cornerstone of USA long term energy and national security strategy.

At least someone is talking about the Moon

[k6mfw]

However, that means someone's gotta put up some money for a earth transfer stage and a lunar lander. There off with a start on the commercial lander but first need to make it work, and will there be enough funding (wherever it may come from) to scale it up to industrial size? I wonder what Dennis Wingo http://www.amazon.com/Moonrush... has to say about this?

Unlike NASA, Musk, and Mars One use Mars as a goal. They romanticize about Mars because it's so far away (we'll put someone to Mars in 20 years and been saying that for past 50 years) and can put off building hardware for some poor smucks in the far future to get stuck with this task.

Hope this is not a Glomar Explorer repeat. And please no He3 talk (see Rei's above comment about lunar He-3 mining is pretty useless).

So they are screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the authorization is for exploration, not exploitation, and they fall under the umbrella of the USA, they cannot set up a mine on the moon and do anything. Sure the US can go out after a 1 year advance notice, but good luck at the backlash.

Far more legally grounded and easier to defend would be a remote asteroid exploitation.

Re:So they are screwed

[Areyoukiddingme]

Since the authorization is for exploration, not exploitation, and they fall under the umbrella of the USA, they cannot set up a mine on the moon and do anything.

Silly. Ships at sea float around with Nigerian flags all the time, because on paper, the company that owns the ship is Nigerian. Of course the Nigerian company is owned by an American oil company, but it still counts.

So it will be with the Earth's moon.

Yeah, take it all!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the waves here on Earth will stop waving.

Mining? water to make oxygen

[__aanbvm4272]

Who said it has to be minerals? Although that could ultimately be the goal. Water is known to be there thanks to NASA lately acknowledging (ever since China said they were going there) that we had clues earlier in the moon samples being moist but was passed off as somehow being 'contaminated.' Sure thing "Need Another Seven Astronauts." Sad joke sorry. An automated fuel station dividing O2 and H would certainly be cheaper than hauling all our oxygen and hydrogen from here. It could be filling tanks waiting for us to arrive All without humans even being involved. The most important resource WATER and fuel. Investors? Hope it isn't exxon mobil. Sign me up for a future mission.

Why mine the moon when you can recycle in orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

There is debris is in orbit already why not send up the hardware to process it all into building material and reaction mass for mass driver based propulsion? Surely being closer to home while still off the surface will make things cheaper.

"Houston - the locust has landed"

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us clearly still believe that everything in the universe is up for grabs - an ancient fantasy we should have grown out of by now.