Scottish Academic: Mining the Moon For Helium 3 Is Evil 462
MarkWhittington writes "Tony Milligan is a teaching fellow of philosophy at the University of Aberdeen and is apparently concerned about helium 3 mining on the moon. In a recent paper he suggested that it should not be allowed for a number of reasons which include environmental objections, his belief that the moon is a cultural artifact, and that too much access to energy would be bad for the human race."
Re:it's puritanism (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh, some of the trends are unsustainable projected into the long run.
That said, projected into the long run, there's a 100% chance of the Earth being destroyed.
Man is actually part of the universe (Score:5, Interesting)
The elements in our bodies [wikipedia.org] come from exploding stars. [lbl.gov]
The earth coalesced from a swirling ball of gas and dust. Which had various quantities of these elements. Then yadda yadda, lifeorms started popping up. Of which man was one of the later variants.
Man needs this fishbowl of earth to survive in the universe, just like goldfish need a fishbowl to survive in our living room. Imagine if the goldfish could get to the refrigerator.
We're just trying to get to the refrigerator. Or maybe even go outside.
The earth is not the center of the universe. It's a smallish planet in the solar system. It's part of the universe. Just like man. Eventually the sun will red giant. If we don't go outside - leave the womb - we're finished. A fruit that died on the vine. Seems like we should be working on that problem now.
Re:Useless academic is useless. (Score:5, Interesting)
What exactly is wrong with the proposition that mining Helium-3 on the moon is evil
Seriously? How about the fact that it privileges an inanimate, lifeless celestial body over the development and happiness of the human race? Most environmental concerns focus on the danger (and immorality) of fucking up biospheres, but the moon has never supported life, and never will (unless we alter it even more radically).
So when country X goes to the moon and mines the helium, are they going to come back and distribute it to all of the world's inhabitants or does it just belong to country X? I'm curious, because before mining the moon began, it would seem that we would need to know who owns the moon? Does it belong to the first one who gets there? Does it belong equally to all people? Or will it belong to some mining company? Because if you get that first basic question wrong then potentionally everything after that becomes immoral because it infringes not on the privelige of some inaimate lifeless celestial body, but real people, here on earth. And if it is immoral, then technically one could consider it evil (although that is a strong word).
Re:Talk about a proactive jumpstart (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the plan isn't that far off. Theory wise we have pretty much everything we'd need to do economical Moon-to-Earth He3 transport today. And academics routinely look at least a few decades out when considering implications of other people's tech
* Helium 3 is not a geological resource, it's believed to be deposited fairly uniformly on Moon's surface by the solar wind, so mining is a matter of gathering the upper layers of lunar dust and processing it to extract helium. Not without it's challenges since we would be doing it on the moon, but in principle nothing terribly complicated.
*While getting from the Earth to the moon is challenging, the return trip is much easier. In essence once you're off the moon it's downhill all the way. Escape velocity is roughly 4.7x slower at 2.4km/s instead of 11.2km/s, which translates to about 22x less energy required. That's a *much* smaller, cheaper rocket, or even a rail gun or the like since there's negligible atmosphere to slow it down on the ascent. Aim it so that it leaves the moon on a collision course with the Earth's upper atmosphere and aerobraking allows for cheap and easy deceleration. Combined with reusable
At present the biggest problem is that nobody yet knows how to practically generate electricity from He3-based fusion, or any fusion really. Even nasty neutron-rich deutrium fusion is still mostly theoretical, and He3 fusion has a 4x higher Coulomb barrier, which radically raises the difficulty. The only current tech I can think of that has a shot at reaching those energies is the Polywell, and that is claimed to be likely able able to do hydrogen-boron fusion relatively easily, which is a reaction much easier to efficiently extract energy from, as well as using abundant Earth-based resources.