The Economic Development of the Moon

MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium 3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. An examination of the issue makes one wonder why."

Wonder and amazement

[SIGALRM (784769)]

From TFA[1]:

The prospect of either Helium 3 fueled fusion or space based solar power or a combination of both replacing fossil fuels should excite people who express concern for the Earth's environment

It's a big, dead rock in space, boys. I doubt that the ridiculous cost of space travel will ever fall enough to make it worthwhile, but in case that happens, the lunar environmentalists will be there to file EPA complaints against anyone trying to make the moon economically productive.

If you looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, would you be filled with a sense of wonder and pride about the ingenuity and courage of your fellow man, or with forbidding and dread that the moon was being raped?

Re:Wonder and amazement

[schlouse (36695)]

I, for one, welcome our new moon raping overlords.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Marcos Eliziario (969923)]

I, for one, welcome our new PER* overlords.
==
* People For The Ethical Treatment of Rocks.

I'd vote for...

[camperdave (969942)]

If you looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, would you be filled with a sense of wonder and pride about the ingenuity and courage of your fellow man, or with forbidding and dread that the moon was being raped?

Given our current level of technology, if I looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, I would be filled with a sense of wonder about the ingenuity of aliens, and with forbidding and dread that the Earth would be next.

Re:

[geekoid (135745)]

On the plus side, we would have one hell of a focus on space exploration the next day!

Re:I'd vote for...

[acvh (120205)]

I would be more amazed at the resolving power of my telescope if I could see a tiny robot mining on the moon.

Re:Sure...

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

Not to mention that you are free labor, and food to boot.

Aw

[msimm (580077)]

Now you're making me feel like junk food. :(

Re:Wonder and amazement

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

Well, from a practical standpoint, we should be using earthbound energy sources to create space based energy sources, then switch to them entirely, and in the same way, we should be using earthbound resources to gain the capacity to gather off-earth resources, and eventually, harvest material that comes from outside the solar system and switch to them entirely.

You stretch the timeline out long enough and assume success and growth, someday we're going to want to have this solar system as a Galactic Wildlife Park. We want it to be the shining jewel of humanity, not a burnt out old husk that we fled because we had to.

You Can't Skip Steps

[BlackGriffen (521856)]

In order to get to the point that we could make an entire solar system a boondoggle, we'll have to get out of ours first. That means tapping energy and resources available in the solar system, whether the process is pretty or not.

It's all getting destroyed by the sun in a few billion years, anyway.

Re:space tourism and resources

[falconwolf (725481)]

Ethanol is a horrid fuel, especially when made from corn

Corn is a horrible source for ethanol, I oppose corn for ethnaol. A better is sugarcane, but even better for making ethanol is Switchgrass [wikipedia.org]. Ah, perhaps I should of finished your post before replying as I see you say sugar cane and switchgrass are better.

I don't know if Branson is concentrating on ethanol or biofuels in general. Unlike ethanol biodiesel can be made from more sources. When Rudolph Diesel designed his engine he designed it to run on vegetable oil, when he showed the engine during the World Expo in Paris he used peanut oil but he also demonstrated running it with hemp oil. And biodiesel can be made from used cooking oil, instead of used oil being a waste biodiesel could be made from it. Wllie Nelson [wikipedia.org] started, invested in, a plant making biodiesel [wikipedia.org] and formed Willie Nelson Biodiesel [wikipedia.org]. In the 1930s Henry Ford designed and build a vehicle on his Iron Mountain Estate using a hemp, aka marijuana, based fuel.

Actually this was part of the reason hemp was made illegal via the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act [wikipedia.org]. Prior to the passage of the act scientific research showed hemp was an excellent industrial plant. Besides fuel hemp was good for making plastics and paper. MIT published a study showing an acre of hemp could produce more fiber for paper than an acre of forest. The use of hemp for fuel interfered with Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Using hemp for paper meant William Hearst's, a big California newspaper publisher who owned thousands of acres of forest, would see a loss in clear cutting forest for paper pulp. Then in the mid '30s Du Pont received a patent on making plastics from petroleum, so again hemp was seen as another threat. Andrew Mellon, a major funder of Du Pont, had his nephew-in-law Harry J Anslinger [wikipedia.org] appointed as the director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics [wikipedia.org] where they were able to push to have hemp made illegal.

Falcon

Re:Wonder and amazement

[jtroutman (121577)]

If you looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, would you be filled with a sense of wonder and pride about the ingenuity and courage of your fellow man, or with forbidding and dread that the moon was being raped?

If I looked at the sky through a telescope and saw a tiny robot mining plant there, mining the moon for energy resources, I'd be filled with a sense of wonder at how far telescope technology had come. Even the most powerful scopes we have here on Earth can't pick out the man-made stuff already on the moon.

Re:

[hardburn (141468)]

No, it's because the size of the optics was limited by what they could carry in the shuttle. Here's the math [cornell.edu], for the interested.

In any case, pictures from the Hubble will never convince the moon hoax people. If the landings were faked in the first place, how much harder is it to fake a few telescope pictures?

Re:Wonder and amazement

[domatic (1128127)]

It sounds like the premise of the next Bond flick: MoonRaper.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[sdnick (1025630)]

Apparently the idea of mining Helium 3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint.

There is no legitimate environmentalist standpoint worth discussing about the Moon. There is no life on the Moon. There is no environment for environmentalists to worry about. If they're worried about the faint possibility that human mining will somehow create some crater on the moon visible from the Earth, they can just pretend an asteroid made it, same as the millions of other craters littering the moon's surface. Or just perform the mining on the horribly scarred side of the Moon facing away from the Earth and dare anyone to claim that man's activities make it look worse.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

Serious mining can move serious amounts of material in a short time, and if the moon became Earth's primary source of material for power, I suspect we'd make a measurable impact within decades.

We're talking about fusion fuel here. Worldwide energy needs can be provided by a few thousand tons of fusion fuel per year. So with the moon's total mass of almost 1e20 tons, it would take hundreds of times the age of the universe to make any significant impact on tides.

But don't worry, it's not going to happen anyway. To harvest usable amounts of the trace quantities of He3 on the moon, we'd have to remotely mine and process countless gigatons of lunar dust. This would be an operation that dwarfs coal mining on earth, but be thousands of times more expensive to carry out. It would almost be certainly easier and cheaper to develop boron/hydrogen fusion technology here on earth, or deal with the drawbacks of simpler deuterium/lithium fusion technology, than to undertake this outer space pipe dream.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[TroyM (956558)]

Please quit injecting reality into our Sci-Fi fantasies.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Smauler (915644)]

I personally believe that _anything_ that helps us get off this planet is basically a good thing. I don't just believe this because of the eggs in one basket argument, though that is an important reason for humanity to not just live on Earth. The main argument in my eyes is that the faster we get into space, the faster I (or my son/daughter, or their son/daughter, etc) am going to get a spaceship.

Also, it's a big dead rock in space now. Geologically it's pretty useful. Militarily it's an imperative to control it so that someone else doesn't. It _will_ be of strategic importance in the future.

Mining the moon for minerals is _not_ raping it. Firstly, you're using the word rape badly (rape requires ability to consent, unless you look to some archaic texts). The moon cannot give consent. It's a rock. It cannot be raped. Secondly, why on earth would mining the moon be considered bad in the first place? I mean, as you said, it's just a big old rock.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Rycross (836649)]

Everything is non-renewable given a long enough time frame. Entropy is a bitch.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Fractal Dice (696349)]

Solution: harvest entropy.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[Kjella (173770)]

There's a huge difference between sources of energy where the future energy potential is affected by our current usage and not. A windmill on a windy day might not be renewed by wind the next day, but the point is that whether we captured that energy or not makes no difference on future winds. That big honking ball of fire called the Sun is like a big campfire - you can warm yourself on it, stay far away from it, put up a solar panel next to it, but in every case the entropy is increased all the same and you're no worse off by taking advantage of it. Compare that to any fossil fuels, fission or fusion then consuming one unit today is one unit less you can use later. The quicker you capture a renewable source the more energy you can harvest from it, the quicker you consume a non-renewable source the faster you'll run out. Something we're learning in oil economics 101 so right about now...

Re:Wonder and amazement

[ultranova (717540)]

Everything is non-renewable given a long enough time frame. Entropy is a bitch.

Actually, wrong. In the long run, entropy is your friend. This is because the maximum amount of entropy any given volume of space can contain is determined by the size of said area (to be exact, it is determined by the surface area of the event horizon of a black hole filling said volume). As long as entropy is less than this amount, it keeps growing, driving all kinds of interesting systems - such as yourself - as it goes.

If the universe was static, entropy would eventually reach its maximum, leading to heat death of the universe and the cessation of all interesting events. But the universe is not static, it is expanding. Consequently, the maximum amount of entropy the universe as a whole can contain is also increasing. If the expansion goes on forever, so does the growth of entropy and all that it drives.

In other words, in an expanding universe there will always be useful energy sources, by the virtue of it expanding.

Re:Wonder and amazement

[jollyreaper (513215)]

In other words, in an expanding universe there will always be useful energy sources, by the virtue of it expanding.

Until the cosmologists change their theories, I believe what you are saying here was two flaws. First, an endlessly expanding universe means that the clumps of matter will get further and further apart, making the formation of stellar nurseries and new stars from the old material less likely. Second, there's only so much hydrogen in the universe, the same goes for the other elements that undergo fusion in stars. Once those elements have all been used up, there won't be anything left but stellar husks. Likewise, there would only be so much radioactive material left for use in reactors by whatever still lives. If we suppose that some super-science could allow them to split regular atoms for energy, maybe reverse the charges of the subatomic particles and create antimatter, there's still only so much matter left to annihilate. At the end, all will be nothing.

You know what it's made of, right?

[jdtch (1175537)]

I think neglecting the potential for cheese mining is the real crime here.

Re:

[sssssss27 (1117705)]

Wallace and Gromit are working on that

The moon doesn't have an "environment"

[by Anonymous Coward]

As I think of it. I think most people think of clean air and water and an ecosystem as an environment. Not a bunch of dead dust in a vacuum.

It seems that many in the "environmental" movement just want nothing to change from its "natural" state, even where there is no nature.

Re:The moon doesn't have an "environment"

[cheebie (459397)]

Mass of the Moon: 7.3477×10^22 Kg according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon [wikipedia.org].

Number of humans currently on earth, massively rounded up: 10^10.

That means that every person on earth would need to use up
seven TRILLION Kg of material to exhaust the moon. Every single
person on earth could grab ten tons of moon-material and have no
appreciable effect on the Moon's mass or it's effect on the tides.

Re:The moon doesn't have an "environment"

[SIGALRM (784769)]

Hey, I know you're trolling, but your comment was so full of inaccuracies I just couldn't help myself.

tides are caused by the moon

Common misperception. Tides are influenced by the moon but are caused by the rotation of the Earth and many other factors.

you don't think a bunch of *GREEDY* companies who's hunger for MORE

Companies feed the hunger of consumers. They may be greedy, but we demand the energy.

thus over time dwindling it's MASS

You do realize the moon is quite large (would fit into the Pacific ocean), correct? How very knee-jerk of you.

I won't give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't cause irrevocable harm while we are still alive

I think you underestimate the difficult proposition of even getting to the moon and mining a single truckload of He3 in your lifetime, let alone a significant portion.

If you are, someone ought to fire you, out of a cannon, into the sun!

Flamebait. I'm not taking it, but isn't the "do it for the children" a pretty ridiculous argument in this (very hypothetical case)?

GPP was not a retard, examine yourself before calling others names pls.

Re:

[lgw (121541)]

Asteroids as a resource makes much more sense but businesses won't want to do that. Can't make money off of something that doesn't also risk the lives of everyone else on earth after all!!!

Your worries are unfounded. Let's say you push an asteroid into orbit containing a cubic mile of gold. Doesn't do you much good up there, does it? No, you have to somehow get that gold to the surface of the Earth. Sure, there's always a country somewhere we wouldn't mind turning into a crater (a crater *made of gold*!), but what if they miss? I think the businesses have the "risking the lives of everyone else on Earth" part worked out fine for asteroids!

Praxis

[kerohazel (913211)]

If we mine the moon, then we'll become dependent on its resources. When it finally explodes (as moons are notorious for doing), our glorious space empire will fall.

I would say his arguments are specious...

[Nova Express (100383)]

...except he didn't make any. His rhetoric boils down to "Environmentalism is good. Looking at the Earth from the Moon helped kickstart environmentalism. Therefore we shouldn't mine the moon." It's a non-sequitur on the order of the Chewbacca Defense. He expects that yelling "Environmentalism!" will cause enough knees to jerk to sway opinion without actually making any arguments. (The sad thing is he may be right, given as how many people treat environmentalism as the new religion. [crichton-official.com] )

Are we to avoid mining the moon because it will harm the native lifeforms? Oh yeah, there aren't any.

Do we need to invent the word "rock-hugger"?

Re:I would say his arguments are specious...

[sheepweevil (1036936)]

I risk going off-topic here, but people whom most would describe as 'rock huggers' exist already. They wish to prevent rock climbers from climbing on certain rock faces.

Rock climbers use 'chalk' that prevents hands from being sweaty, but it has the unfortunate side effect of putting white patches wherever there are handholds on the rock face. Also, one method of climbing a rock wall involves having metal pitons drilled into the rock. Some groups lobby to have rock climbers stop climbing in areas, or disallow them from placing pitons.

So I guess the argument in this case with the moon isn't about lifeforms, it is more about aesthetics; similar to the 'rock huggers' I have described. But I don't see how mass mining of the moon would have a visual effect on the moon's appearance for a very very long time.

Re:I would say his arguments are specious...

[Watts Martin (3616)]

While Sheepweevil makes essentially the same point, you could make the argument that restricting industry on the moon is good from the perspective of preserving natural monuments. There are a lot of sites right here on Earth that have no direct economic value, but that, it could be argued, have their own intrinsic, non-economic value. That notion of intrinsic value tends to sit very poorly with those who define all external value as economic, but conservation and preservation on purely economic measures has always been dicey. (i.e., if you tried to make an argument for restricting whaling based on the grounds that if you killed all of them, there wouldn't be a whaling industry any more, the moment someone comes along with a paper demonstrating that a higher return on investment can be achieved by killing all the whales now and sinking part of the profits into something else, you're hosed. An argument for saving whales has to assign them intrinsic value separate from their economic use.)

Of course, if I take off the devil's advocate hat, I might make the more prosaic point that there are a whole frikkin' lot of technological issues that have to be solved to get to the point where having this argument even makes sense. It's easy to pile onto Andrew Smith, the author of the anti-plundering column, but I'm not giving any kudos to Mark Whittington, the guy who wrote the response and managed to get Slashdot to put this on the front page. Smith's column is actually very short and doesn't really talk about "saving the moon's environment." Whittington is by and large using this as an excuse to trot out hoary old libertarian-crank* nonsense about how environmentalists are all anti-technology luddites who won't be happy unless we return to the Dark Ages.

*Before the libertarians leap on this, I do distinguish between "libertarian" and "libertarian-crank." Drawing the distinction is beyond the scope of this footnote.

Short-sighted world rapers

[Cajun Hell (725246)]

If you let the helium out, it will stop floating up in the sky. Guess where it will fall.

Screw volcanoes; some people say the dinosaurs died because they had no space program. Maybe they died because they did have one, and made the same type of arrogant mistake.

Mr Moonbeam

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Earth's sister has played a role in teaching us to value our environment: how extraordinary to think that the next giant leap for the environmental movement might be a campaign to stop state-sponsored mining companies chomping her up in glorious privacy, a quarter of a million miles from our ravaged home.

He doesn't even give a reason why the environmental movement might want to stop mining the Moon. Maybe he thinks environmentalism is about "pretty Nature, don't hurt her", rather than survival and legacy, but he doesn't even say so.

The only argument his protest makes about mining the Moon is in favor: mining the He-3 would reduce the need to damage the Earth producing energy here.

There might be an argument for science preserving the layout of the Lunar surface for study (eg, the record of impact angles and composition which accumulate billions of years of astrophysical history), but there are technical solutions to that problem, and he doesn't even mention them (except some handwaving about lacking "science" in our goals).

That is the kind of taking "environmentalism's" name in vain that gives legitimate environmentalism a bad name.

Flawed Philosophy

[Toonol (1057698)]

This is a very harmful idea. A certain amount of environmentalism makes sense; disrupting ecosystems can have harmful repercussions, as can running out of non-renewable resources, etc.

But this idea of preserving the lunar environment seems to me to be based on the idea that objects are better left untouched by humanity. That things should be left untouched, even when it is detrimental to humanity, and no worse than neutral to our ecosystem. This is the type of nonsense that, in the extreme, calls for humanity to let itself go extinct, so as to stop our plundering of the Earth.

Nothing in nature is a value, without something living that gives it that worth.

Forget environmentalism-what about Int'l Relations

[langelgjm (860756)]

I don't think environmentalism is the important issue here. I'm more interested in what impact the economic development of the moon will have on international relations.

Whose moon is it? Of course we have treaties, but when a company starts mining up there, you can bet the profits aren't going to be distributed very widely. Besides the ethical implications of this, how are other states going to react to an American or Chinese company mining a resource that used to be considered off-limits and belonging to all, until it was convenient for that to no longer be the case? Is this just a case of first come, first serve capitalism? There are more things at stake here than just environmentalism.

Simple solution

[rossdee (243626)]

Lets mine the far side of the moon, where it won't be seen by those on earth.

Re:Simple solution

[Megane (129182)]

Lets mine the far side of the moon, where it won't be seen by those on earth.

There are people who would consider that not just raping the Moon Goddess, but anally raping the Moon Goddess.

(P.S.: In before rule 34!)

Ummmm. o-kay.

[Penguinisto (415985)]

This guy proves once and for all that for some elements (not ALL, damnit - just some), it isn't about preserving an ecosystem or conserving species, but about absolute and unrelenting self-hatred for the human species.

Seriously - if it was an argument about contributing to space junk (which can be a hazard to life and limb), or an argument about leaving nascent life (like, say, on Europa or Titan) alone to develop, play... I can grok those arguments.

But the ones presented? ...it's the friggin' Moon! There ain't jack shit for life or biomass there! The only non-commercial value it currently has offhand are the Apollo landing sites (for historical value), and that's it!

IMHO, tear that bastard up if it generates commerce, gives us extra space to live, acts as an astronomical platform, and more importantly, if it takes humankind that much closer to becoming a space-faring race. It's not like we'll reduce its mass enough to really worry about instability (at least not within the next billion years or so), and it's (IMHO) free and open for the taking - belonging (nor should it ever belong) to no earth-bound nation.

/P

What environment?

[SKorvus (685199)]

I am an very environmentally-conscious person: walking, biking or transit, no car. Vegan. Local, preferably organic produce. Buy used goods where-ever possible, make do or repair rather than buying. I give that as background, so that it's clear I'm not a typical consumer that thinks my personal desires outweigh impact to the environment.

That that said, I must ask: what environment? The moon is a lifeless, barren hunk of rock. All that has ever occurred in its history, is being pummeled by countless meteors to create a scarred and pulverized surface. There is no environment to protect, only dust and rocks. And as pristine and spartan beauty that may be, there's simply no one to admire it.

Right now, the universe appears devoid of life, except on our tiny blue rock, and it's always in danger of being snuffed out by one stray asteroid. Getting humanity up into space is the best thing we can do, for us, and for the Earth. Where we go, we will bring life with us. We will create new environments on any planets we settle. We are the seed by which Earth's life can spread throughout the galaxy.

Seeing lights glittering back at us from human settlements during a new moon shouldn't be viewed as a desecration of something worth saving, but the growth of new life where there was none before.

And If We Don't...

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

And if we don't plunder the Moon, what happens? It sits up there in pristine condition for what -- forever?

Just look at all the beautiful He3. Isn't it beautiful? Aren't you glad your daddy stopped them from plundering the Moon of all of it so that we can almost enjoy this unspoiled view of it through the completely polluted atmosphere of Earth because we never got that clean energy source from up there?

Yeah, right! There are some real clowns in the world, and the guy against this qualifies as two of them when weighted in the average of clown foolishness.

Linked article author is troll...

[Ardeaem (625311)]

From the linked article:

One can be forgiven for suspecting that the true motives of environmentalists, whether they oppose mining the Moon, drilling for oil in Alaska, or building wind farms off Nantucket, involve less a love for the environment and more a hostility for technology itself.

I believe I speak for most environmentalists on Slashdot (having read the comments about this article) and most environmentalists in general (although I can't be sure) that the implication that environmentalists are just crazy Ludites is crazy in itself. Only someone completely cut off from average, everyday environmentalists would say such a thing. The evidence just on Slashdot is overwhelming; no one would say Slashdotters are hostile towards technology, and many (most?) could be described as environmentalists. This just doesn't square with reality.

Just because one (or a few) environmentalist has a (to us) wacky view, doesn't mean he represents the whole of environmentalists. The only reason you'd imply this is if you had an agenda, and the author of the linked article clearly does.

Re:Linked article author is troll...

[bnenning (58349)]

the implication that environmentalists are just crazy Ludites is crazy in itself

Most aren't. But unfortunately the few that are have a lot of influence. Look at the utterly irrational fear of nuclear power they've created, when by any environmental standard it's tremendously better than fossil fuels. For them, the real problem is not environmental damage but our decadent materialist lifestyles, and anything that allows us to continue on that path must be opposed.

A lot of dirt, not much helium-3

[iamlucky13 (795185)]

A lot of us are anxious to see some major commercial application of space (see the recent discussion on space-based solar power, too), but I'm afraid helium-3 mining on the moon is not a feasible one.

First of all, Helium-3 already exists in smaller amounts on earth. It makes up about 0.00138% of the helium on the earth, as opposed to 0.00138% of helium on the moon. More importantly, it can also be synthesized by deuterium fusion or by tritium decay, although current production is only a few kilograms per year. However, one of the first generation fusion fuels is deuterium, so it's very likely that first generation technology could eventually be used to make fuel for second generation fusion plants.

Second, obviously, we have not achieved practical hydrogen fusion yet, much less helium fusion, which is harder. The current ITER timeline estimates the first commercial hydrogen fusion plants will come online around 2040-2050. Helium fusion, if we decide it's worth the effort to develop, will come later.

Third, you have to move a lot of dirt to get a useful amount of He-3. Estimates are the US alone would need at least 15-20 tons per year for our current electrical generation. At the quoted 0.01 ppm on the moon, that means you need to process 2 billion tons (approx 670 million cubic meters) of regolith every year. In comparison, the giant Three Gorges Dam in China required excavating only 134 million cubic meters of material over a period of 10 years, using thousands of workers and who knows how many tons of heavy equipment.

Additionally, processing the regolith for the helium requires first boiling out all of the gasses by heating the excavated dirt several hundred degrees, then separating the minute fraction of He-3 from all the "waste" gasses. It will be very energy intensive. By my very rough math, every cubic meter of moon you excavate requires on order of 100 kW-hours of heat, so a year's worth of digging would take 47 billion kW-hours. This is about 4% of our current electrical usage, which hints at the scale of the power production facilities that would have to be built on the moon to facilitate this mining...over 5,000 MW of capacity not counting digging and gas segregation energy needs.

Not for mining, for launch

[Animats (122034)]

The "Helium 3 on the moon" people have it backwards. As someone else pointed out, you have to mine a lot of dirt to get any useful amount of the stuff. On the other hand, deuterium is available at moderate prices. Heavy water costs about $300/Kg. If we ever get fusion to work as a power source (a big if, after half a century of failure), deuterium fusion will work first.

There's some grumbling about deuterium fusion producing radioactive waste products, but it's nowhere near as messy as fission. You get some tritium (which is a useful material; among other things, it decays into ... Helium-3!) and the reactor components may become radioactive, but the isotopes are relatively short-lived; decades, not millennia, of decay time are required. The concrete and steel has already cooled off for many older decommissioned reactors.

Helium-3 fusion is potentially cleaner, though. If we ever get fusion to work, it's the fuel of choice for getting off the earth with fusion power, because you could dump the reaction products into the atmosphere without causing fallout.

So forget about mining the moon to power Earth. Dumb idea. Think about mining helium on Earth to power launch vehicles.

Re:The Grand Canyon is pretty low on observable li

[cheebie (459397)]

Where in the world did you get the idea that there is little
visible life in the Grand Canyon?

http://digital-desert.com/grand-canyon/wildlife.html [digital-desert.com]

The moon is a great big dead rock. Moving the pieces of that
rock around won't affect anything in the slightest. Sure, we'll
probably preserve the Apollo sites, and maybe a few particularly
picturesque spots, but the rest of it is a future mining site.

Re:running the numbers

[Megane (129182)]

You could even pack the isotope into large artillery shells and fire them towards Earth.

Which still doesn't solve the main problem. We don't have Helium 3 fusion yet. And we aren't likely to for years. We'll probably have flying cars and Duke Nukem Forever first.

We haven't even gotten the easiest fusion reactions working yet to the point where they will generate a net gain of electricity.

Re:Falacy

[Jerf (17166)]

From a purely selfish human point of view there might also come a day when people want to visit that untouched environment.

So, on the one hand, we have the Moon.

• Vast energy and material resources that will allow untold bazillions of years of human lifespan.
• Vast energy and material resources that will allow the flourishing ecosystems that Man will bring with him, totalling even more untold bazillions of years of life. (If we truly colonize the Moon, only the first generation or two will live in the sterile settlements we all imagine.)
• Vast energy and material resources which will allow untold bazillions of years of life for new life forms, those adapted to the lunar environments and those partially or entirely created by Man.
• An insurance policy for intelligent life as we know it (not just Man, you know, not for much longer) against an unfortunate accident on the Earth.
• A launching base for further exploration and the spreading of yet more life, wonderful, vibrant, diverse life across the universe.

Against this, you argue

• Somebody, someday, might want to see the original moon.

How unbelievably fucking selfish to deny the universe life so that you can see a pretty rock. Get a poster or something already. If you try, you might be able to get one with a unicorn on it too; bonus!

Environmentalists ought to be leading the charge for space colonization. Forget saving ecosystems that do pretty well without your help... what about the ecosystems that don't even exist yet? Biodiversity? You ain't seen nothing yet. If you love life, don't stand in front of it.

Re:Falacy

[femto (459605)]

Yeah, but this isn't just any rock. It's the most significant rock in human history, from ancient times to now.

Here is a precedent. There is absolutely no question that Uluru [wikipedia.org] deserves protection. It's protected by a World Heritage Order, which puts it in the global crown jewels. What is it? It's a bloody big rock, just like the moon.