Plans to Strip Mine the Moon May Soon be More Than Just Science-Fiction

Source: www.globalresearch.ca...

It may not be long before we start mining the moon for its resources, particularly the rare Helium-3 for its use in nuclear fusion.


Billions of tonnes of resources, ranging from water to gases to metals, have been detected on the Moon and further out into space, and both governments and private companies are navigating the ambiguous legal parlance to determine how to reach, extract and distribute it all.

Vast quantities of the isotope Helium-3 are known to exist on the Moon, as well as in the atmospheres of planets like Jupiter, and could come into high demand as the essential fuel for the so-called 'golden dream' of nuclear fusion power.

While existing nuclear fission plants break apart atoms and harvest the excess energy, nuclear fusion combines atoms of hydrogen to create helium, a process that releases vast amounts of energy.

According to Matthew Genge, lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London, the Moon’s lack of atmosphere means it has been bombarded by high-energy particles for billions of years, some of which have embedded on its surface.

This reminds me of a movie I saw recently.. Called MOON. Basically about a guy all alone up there mining helium3 for use back on earth. Kidna cool movie, with a twist ( I won't spoil it if you actually are gonna check it out).

Anyways, the real issue is.. is this possible? I have a lot of issues with the Moon, as far as us actually going there and what is actually there... I'm interested in what other ATS'ers think of this...

Thoughts?!

Moon was an absolutely amazing movie. Actually, I think I'll watch it again tonight.. I haven't seen it since it came out.

I have my faith in the private sector, which I believe will speed up the research needed to economically mine outside of our planet. I can't wait until the mining begins. If they start manned expeditions, I may even consider a career in it

reply to post by Nspekta


They have been planning it for awhile.

oai.dtic.mil...

oai.dtic.mil...

Right area, wrong material.

It's the Fe0 iron they really want to go after. That form of iron doesn't exist on Earth. Scientists are planning on just using microwaves to melt that form of iron together on the moon to create very very large pieces...cheaply in space.

Its about time, I can't believe it has taken us so long to realize space is our future, if we don't get out there in a big way soon humans mite not be around much longer.

Hmm my question is, as the moon is patrimony of humankind, who gets to decide which rich pig gets richer?
I mean, IF the moon belongs to someone, it belongs to us ALL so i don't look too kindly on this type of endeavors, and that's why I believe that private exploitation of space should be allowed ONLY in very specific cases and very much regulated.
I distrust current gov'ts but I trust corporations even less...

Putting that aside...

It's really exciting the potential our moon has, not only because of the resources it possesses, but also because of the advantages it has for production sectors like metallurgy and bio-tech research, the coolness of the location for spaceship factories (it would allow us to build FREAKISHLY LARGE ships, and that's just more cool, which added to previous coolness levels, makes all of this really arousing... )

Title
GlobalResearch.ca - Centre for Research on Globalization

Description
The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) is an independent research and media group of writers, scholars and activists. It is a registered non profit organization in the province of Quebec, Canada.

The Global Research webpage at www.globalresearch.ca based in Montreal publishes news articles, commentary, background research and analysis on a broad range of issues, focussing on social, economic, strategic, geopolitical and environmental processes.

Our website was established on the 9th of September 2001, two days before the tragic events of September 11. Barely a few days later, Global Research had become a major news source on the New World Order and Washington's "war on terrorism".

Hmm, Canadian students, eh. Activists, their website took off from 9/11, hmm.

Originally posted by Pervius
Right area, wrong material.

It's the Fe0 iron they really want to go after. That form of iron doesn't exist on Earth. Scientists are planning on just using microwaves to melt that form of iron together on the moon to create very very large pieces...cheaply in space.

The tritium. Only about 500 pounds has been able to be produced since 1955. It's inches deep on the entire surface, coming from the Sun. It can provide energy to electricity to run every load ON EARTH for a year with just a few hundred pounds and there are millions of tons on the moon. The oil cartel will quash it.

I have been trying to follow this issue, thanks for posting

isnt there a treaty that prohibits this ? did China not sign it ?

it it obviously an expensive trip, and you would have to establish permament settlements along the way.

maybe in my kids lifetime

i we all don't go broke first

reply to post by Nspekta


Best movie I've seen in a long time.

No "chase " scene

No " Bad guy" just you , sam rockwell , kevin spacey's voice and some cool visuals...O and a mystery to solve kind of.

reply to post by Illustronic

Your point being...??

Originally posted by Nspekta

Vast quantities of the isotope Helium-3 are known to exist on the Moon, as well as in the atmospheres of planets like Jupiter, and could come into high demand as the essential fuel for the so-called 'golden dream' of nuclear fusion power.

While existing nuclear fission plants break apart atoms and harvest the excess energy, nuclear fusion combines atoms of hydrogen to create helium, a process that releases vast amounts of energy.

Anyways, the real issue is.. is this possible? I have a lot of issues with the Moon, as far as us actually going there and what is actually there... I'm interested in what other ATS'ers think of this...

I'll give you some clues on how you can find your answers to this He3 mining using Google.

First, He3 by itself is pretty useless. If you have some He3 it won't power any of your appliances.

Theoretically, yes it COULD power your appliances if we built an He3 reactor, and theoretically we could build a nuclear powered spaceship to travel to some nearby stars. Why do I mention those two together? Because while they are both possible, I don't think you will see either one in the next 50 years.

Here's where Google helps. search for He3 reactor and see what you get. In my search the projections are that such a reactor is a long way off, but see what you get.

Regarding the other minerals, it's a simple application of economics 101, supply and demand pricing curves which set prices for materials on the open market, versus the economics of retrieving these same materials from the moon. The He3 MAY be economically feasible to mine today, IF we had He3 reactors, which we don't.

I suspect the other materials are probably not economically feasible to mine today, however, as prices on Earth escalate and materials become scarcer, this may change. It seems very likely that it will become economically feasible at some point, but I don't know when that will happen because of the difficulty of predicting future prices of commodities and space mining. I can say space mining probably won't be too cheap for the foreseeable future, though this too can change with innovation. My guess is it won't be commercially viable for at least 50 years and it could be 500 years or even longer, but eventually, some moon mining will probably happen.

Non-commercial mining might happen sooner, and what I mean by that is, mining in space, for space projects. These materials would be much more expensive to mine in space compared to earth market prices so it wouldn't make economic sense to return them to the Earth, but when you compare the mining cost to the cost of launching them from Earth, the mining cost could be much less than that, so the economics of space mining for space projects are much more favorable.

Let's try not to get too far off topic, please.

TIA

reply to post by Nspekta


Its not VERIFIED! Duh! They can post anything they can dream up.

Those DARPA or whatever links are meaningless, you know how many of those proposals cross a desk unread? Any idea what those links are to? Any idea?

reply to post by Nspekta


Looking for a different article one I saw months ago, I came upon both of these, very interesting and news to me. Certainly ownership of the land would come into question for strip mining or anything else and now one cannot claim sovereignty over the moon or Mars so I don't see how it can be done.
For Sale: Moon and Mars

Would you like to buy some real estate on Mars or the Moon?
No, this would not be the equivalent of buying the Brooklyn Bridge, at least according to a review of legal precedents and treaties published in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce.
The authors, Alan Wasser and Douglas Jobe of the Space Settlement Institute, conclude that the international Outer Space Treaty prohibits nations from claiming sovereignty over the Moon or Mars, it does not preclude private land claims, and they point to legal precedents establishing the necessary condition for anyone making a land claim: living there. tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com...

And this somewhat related since ownership would come before mining and this story is just too bizarre not to include:
Extraterrestrial real estate - Notable claims

Adam Ismail, Mustafa Khalil and Abdullah al-Umari, three men from Yemen, sued NASA for invading Mars. They claim that they "inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago". They based their argument on mythologies of the Himyaritic and Sabaean civilizations that existed several thousand years B.C.E en.wikipedia.org...

Yes, very possible. This topic made me wish to research it a bit and i only found a few plausible things. Apparently this is very reliable nuclear source of enegry and the moon is very abundant with it. This we all know, but also it seems that the only real interest in it comes from Russia, who is too poor to fund going up and getting it. Then we have the U.S. and NASA who have the monitary supplies neccesary but no real willpower to go get it. It's at 300 million dollar+ project and Russia does want to do more about tri-hydrogen but will have to wait till at least 2012.

Hopefully this information is accurate, but then again I don't know if I really want Russia getting more radioactive

i thought this helium 3 mining was just fiction.
the moon was an awesome film.