The Prospects For Lunar Mining 348
MarkWhittington writes "With the discovery of vast amounts of water on the Moon, some frozen in the shadows of craters at the Lunar poles and some chemically bonded with the regolith, interest in lunar mining has arisen among commercial space entrepreneurs. Paul Spudis, a lunar geologist, has suggested a plan to return to the Moon, which features, among other things, robotic resource extraction and the deployment of space-based fuel depots using lunar water even before the first human explorers return to the lunar surface. But Mike Wall, writing in Space.com, suggests that there are a number of legal as well as technical issues involved in setting up lunar mining operations."
Save on supervisory staff (Score:5, Funny)
by using clones!
Re:Save on supervisory staff (Score:5, Funny)
by using clones!
No, clones are people two!
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Easy Legal Fix. (Score:5, Funny)
Please direct all complaints to:
Luna Mining Company
1 Moon Drive
Moon
Energy requirements? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised the most obvious challenge in going to the moon isn't mentioned in the article: that it takes a huge amount of energy to get to the moon and then to get back. I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water? Energy production uses a huge amount of water. Going to the moon for some water is counter productive.
It is a far more efficient use of energy to mine the mineral out of garbage dumps than try to try to ship it from the moon.
Re:Energy requirements? (Score:5, Insightful)
it takes a huge amount of energy to get to the moon and then to get back
You don't have to send much material to the moon: "just" some mining and processing robots. The real trick will be getting the resulting large quantities of rocket fuel from the moon to where it would be useful (i.e. other Earth orbits). The moon's gravity well is much shallower than Earth's, but I'm not sure if it's shallow enough to make such a venture profitable.
I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water? Energy production uses a huge amount of water.
Rocket fuel, apparently. But to get rocket fuel (read: hydrogen and oxygen) you have to split the mined moon-water, which means you'll need some energy source to do the splitting. Where will that energy come from? Vast solar panel arrays? Nuclear? Geothermal? (does the moon have any geothermal energy to be tapped?)
Re:Energy requirements? (Score:5, Funny)
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Precisely.
Prehistoric moon whales.....that is all.
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I'm glad you wooshed yourself.
But you really should stop writing in the second person in public fora.
Re:Energy requirements? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're new to the moon, aren't you?
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He brings up a good idea but poor execution. According to the recently released illumination map there are many places where this could be done.
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It would seem that the dark and light sides of the moon comprises a heat engine. For example, a tube which was placed about the pole and filled with gas, would expand in areas exposed to the sun and contract away from the sun in a continuous cycle, much like the engine that powers the Earths weather.
It would this would be extensible and provide the local energy by turbine to operate some robotic process.
Theoreticaly it should work. Practically, the cosine-law [wikipedia.org] is your worst enemy... ...
1. staying close to the poles - building cost constraints - very poor angle of incidence
2. on a 28 days for a "full engine cycle" with probably about 1/3 of this duration in a situation where the gradient is not good enough (extremities of your "tube" too close to the day-night terminators) - need hell of a lot of "thermal inertia" to get the most of the "max temperature differential" period)
somehow... I don't think it's g
Re:Energy requirements? (Score:5, Informative)
HTH. HAND.
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Best album evar.
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The "far side" of the moon always faces away from earth. The "far side" is often mistakenly called the "dark side". But at any given time, there is an actual dark side, just as there is on earth -- i.e., a night side. Though the night side and day side shift places over the course of a lunar "day", it should still be possible in theory to run a heat engine.
Might even be possible to run a heat engine off the temperature difference in one place ov
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No, they aren't. The moon is tidally locked with Earth. That means that the moon always faces Earth, not that it always faces the sun. This is why you always see the same face of the moon. What part of the moon is getting hit by the sun does indeed change. The "dark side of the moon" is the side Earth doesn't see, but the Sun sees it all the time.
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Re:Energy requirements? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly, it's just like the "Dark Ages". They were called that not because they were horrible, but because almost no records were kept at the time, so we have very very little historical knowledge of that period. Of course, this probably means it was a shitty time to live too, but we can't know for sure because of the lack of records.
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The "figurative" dark side (that is, the side which isn't facing the earth) is fixed.
Since it's the literal one that would be involved in any sort of heat engine, it's possible that you have them confused.
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I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water? Energy production uses a huge amount of water.
Rocket fuel, apparently. But to get rocket fuel (read: hydrogen and oxygen) you have to split the mined moon-water, which means you'll need some energy source to do the splitting. Where will that energy come from? Vast solar panel arrays? Nuclear? Geothermal? (does the moon have any geothermal energy to be tapped?)
Helium-3 [wikipedia.org] has been discussed as an energy source on it's own and there has been interest in mining it on the moon (extraterrestrial supplies) [wikipedia.org].
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Geothermal? (does the moon have any geothermal energy to be tapped?)
Geothermal? For sure it doesn't.
(hint: Geo comes from Gea or Gaia).
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The real problem is that mining can't be done without at least fifty colonists so before we try to work out mining we'll first have to worry about building an S.I.O.S. and getting it up there.
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Luna is the Roman name for the moon goddess. The Greek name is Selene. Thus terms like selenography, selenothermal, selenotectonic are used to refer to processes and studies of the Moon.
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Knowledge. Learning how to use robots to build and maintain an autonomous moon base would be valuable in and of itself.
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Mike Wall's piece brings it up. Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, which are the major components of rocket fuel. The idea is to mine and process it on the moon, then set up refueling stations in LEO so that you only need to carry enough fuel for part of the way. The hard part is getting off of Earth - going to the Moon, landing, taking off, and returning to Earth is much cheaper. That's why Apollo 13 could make it - big rocket going, small rocket coming back. If you eliminate the need fo
Re:Energy requirements? (Score:5, Interesting)
We would not be mining the moon for anything that would go back down the gravity well to Earth. We would be mining it for resources for space exploration and operations instead of mining Earth for them. The moon, being smaller has a much smaller cost of getting materials into orbit. If we need a sufficient amount of those materials, it becomes cheaper to ship a mining operation from Earth to the moon and then those materials to space than to ship all the materials straight from Earth. Water is the main resource people are talking about and to reach that break even point, we'd need megatons of the stuff. The only operations that might being to need that much resources from the moon would be large scale habitation or perhaps a trip to Mars. in short, out side of pure science, there will not be any need to mine the moon till there is already a great deal of activity in space at which point mining the moon will just be a cost cutting method.
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Won't mining the moon screw up all life on Earth, if we mine enough?
No, the principle of "most restricting factor governs the ecology" acts nice... water is bound to finish much earlier. To continue mining, you'll need to replace it - ice asteroid capture? If you are able to capture asteroids, no need to mine the moon anymore.
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Windmills don't take mass away from the planet. Mining a bunch of stuff and shipping it off the planet (er, moon) does.
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Helium 2? What universe are you from? One where the strong nuclear force is 2% greater?
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He, too, is from the real universe. This is just some weird parallel world where slashdot editors don't, the US military has giant [latimes.com] blimps [highlandstoday.com], the president is black, and the 2004 US civil war never happened.
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I think you mean helium-3. Helium-2 is quite impossible.
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Helium-2 is quite possible, it just has a short half-life.
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I had similar thoughts when I read the summary. From reading the article, it seems the plan would be to do some robotic mining in order to prepare to create a moon base, so this is not purely about mining. If someone has more knowledge of this topic, feel free to correct me here, but it seems it would be much cheaper to do mining in the asteroid belt rather than to go back to the moon, because you avoid the cost of launch out of the moon gravity well. Of course, going to the asteroid belt requires solving a
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I mean what are we going to mine that has so much value? Water?
Well, what about the unobtanium? You know, the elements on the periodic table found right between Illudium and weapon's grade Balloneyum.
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Like this [wikipedia.org]?
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Because A.C. Clarke said so;) In Songs of Distant Earth [wikipedia.org], the advanced space-faring humans (as against the native humans of the ocean planet Thalassa) haul water from the world ocean by freezing a few cubic meters of it at a time and then pulling the blocks of ice up.
The difference between hauling up ice cubes and siphoning water is the difference between using a bucket to fetch water for your small camp (a digital activity that can be measured by the number of trips to and from the camp) and diverting a ri
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Helium-3 in the long term. Solar energy is also extremely abundant above Earth's atmosphere. It's easier energetically speaking, to manufacture solar cell components from resources extracted from the moon and ship it to LEO than it is to do so on Earth and ship it up to LEO. The idea is to have solar cells in LEO or Geostationary orbit and beam the power to ground stations in the form of microwave power.
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First of all we can't fuse DT which is >1000x easier to fuse than He3 or He3D. So its not a fuel for anything we can build right now at all.
Secondly, if we can fuse He3 or He3D we can also fuse DD which *gives* He3 ash. This source of He3 will be cheaper by a long shot.
Finally there is very little He3 on the moon and is very dilute.
Yeah let's do it! (Score:2)
There's a whole new planet just waiting to be overexploited and ruined by greedy corporations out there...
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What do we need more humans for?
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Zero sum game, anyone? (Score:2)
You seem to be worried that there isn't enough pie to go around.
Maybe part of the solution is to make more pie.
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And if we don't have enough people to make all that pie, maybe part of the solution is to make more people?
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You seem to be worried that there isn't enough pie to go around.
Maybe part of the solution is to make more pie.
Why for? There's an easier solution to this:
1. blow hot air under the pie crust (like, create derivatives for the pie)
2. sell the hot air to the dumb-witted. No worries, there will be many to buy, the sum of intelligence on the planet is constant, the population growing is an advantage.
3. make sure you don't get fooled by your own hot air or have some governments ready to bail you
4. profit
Sounds familiar?
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> Sounds familiar?
Yea. And it doesn't work, unlike Capitalism which actually creates wealth. Our current economic difficulties are the result of a mixed economy, one where profit is capitalist and loss is socialist, one where government intervention in the economy is so extreme in some areas it is hard to call it a market with a straight face. And yes one where corporations are too powerful. But guess what a corporation is? A GOVERNMENT created psuedo entity.
The problem corporations create is a loss
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I still don't get your opinion in regards with the corporations:
1. are they a good thing - because they are pretty synonymous in the current stage of capitalism, them being the enitities that create most of the wealth; *or*
2. are they a baaad thing - being in existence because the blessing of a governmen. (no, they are not created by the govt, they are created by the money everybody in the capitalistic world put in - if you have a private retirement plan, you are contributing to their existenc
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What do we need more humans for?
Somebody has to consume and pay for it.
Without enough humans to buy iPhones and take mortgages they can't afford, how are those "exponential grow bubbles" gonna last? The boom-to-bust cycle started to become boring, you know?
Re:Yeah let's do it! (Score:4, Funny)
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Rather than answering my question, you inverted it, made it a statement, then attributed the statement to me? Then concluded I should kill myself?
Please ease up on the vitriol. I mean you no harm.
International Campaign to Save the Dust! (Score:2)
Yeah, I can hardly wait for all the posts about how the moon has such a delicate ecosystem.
We certainly must not disrupt a pristine environment like that.
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There's a whole new planet just waiting to be overexploited and ruined by greedy corporations out there...
Ruined how exactly? Is there some flourishing lunar ecosystem (complete with 10-foot smurfs) that I am not aware of?
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The inspiration will be as much commercial as scientific and a desire to enhance national prestige and security.
Afterall, there's nothing wrong with greedy corporations. I mean, Mark Whittington [yahoo.com] - huge genius, I tell ya - offered two out-of-the-box solutions for free... how can we not go ahead and privatize the government, start leasing the moon and reap the profits! [yahoo.com]?
we need a less fuel useing way to get there as the (Score:2)
we need a less fuel useing way to get there as the oil costs are high to get the moon.
Moon Miners Manifesto: (Score:3)
Maybe Peter Kokh and the rest of the Lunar Reclamation Society (www.moonsociety.org) will see their dream someday.
I last heard from them in the late 1980s.
I note they have a chapter in India now. At least people somewhere haven't given up the dream.
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Well, even Peter might admit they're lunatics.
But they're the right kind of lunatics. :)
A Harsh Mistress (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't think of one story about mining on the moon that didn't result in a lunar revolt. I'd say the last thing they have to worry about is who owns the resources. It's the staff/residents you have to watch out for.
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I can't think of one story about mining on the moon that didn't result in a lunar revolt. I'd say the last thing they have to worry about is who owns the resources. It's the staff/residents you have to watch out for.
I'll say. Those people will need to be able to withstand -110 to 120 degrees celcius, and live in an environment with no air, no water, no life and cancer causing dust. Sounds damn tough to me!!! Only saving grace is moon gravity means they aren't strong.
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Or they can build heated structures filled with air and wear space suits when they go outside.
Did you think this would be some sort of camping expedition?
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I actually just read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" last week and while I enjoyed the book I don't consider it a very effective "how-to start a lunar libertarian revolution." It's a great story, but it also presupposes a great many things for the plot and motivations to work. Not the least of which being that humanity becomes Malthusian enough to require the space on the moon and th
Sam Rockwell better run (Score:2)
purpose?; humans vs robots (Score:2)
There are two completely orthogonal ideas being discussed in these articles: (1) Send humans to the moon again, and help them to survive and return, all at a more reasonable price, by extracting drinking water and rocket fuel (hydrogen and oxygen) from lunar ice. (2) Extract water from the moon and bring it down to low earth orbit for sale as a commodity (rocket fuel).
#1 raises the question of why it would be valuable to send humans to the moon again. The author of the airspacemag.com article says that we s
Haha, lawyers. . . (Score:2)
It's not clear that you'd own what you dig up? Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance.
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"Who could stop you from using it?! I'd say the fundamental concept of ownership (if you've got it, it's yours) applies more than some bizarre treaty that's never had any real significance."
Lawyers. And governments (lawyers and weapons). Unless you were planning to never return to Earth or near Earth orbit. And if you don't need to do that, then the lawyers and the governments (with lawyers and weapons) can also come to you. Sure, nobody may stop you from getting it and using it but they sure as heck ca
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> And if you don't need to do that, then the lawyers and the governments
> (with lawyers and weapons) can also come to you.
Actually, no. If you are mining lunar resources in sufficient quantity to be economically viable and delivering them to earth orbit you, by definition, are in possession of sufficient tech with direct military application that you could tell the earthers to self procreate. Do the math. Instead of delivering a ton of water into low earth orbit you could just drop a ton of rock on
Satellite construction as viable space industry (Score:3)
Building, deploying, and maintaining satellites in space, primarily from resources in space, is the best possibility I can think of as an industry that could be self sustaining and based in space while still providing the major economic benefit to the homeworld needed to bootstrap it. Sending satellites into space is so expensive today that valuable and potentially profitable services aren't mass market viable due to the cost of transporting people and things into space. Example: satellite phones. Imagine if there were a self-sustaining space-based satellite industry. In 100 years our descedents could be born in an asteroid-based, moon-based, or space-based sattelite complex colony.
We should start building up space-based industrial capacity from what's already available in space, which means rebuilding nearly from scratch. We should treat it as a variation on the sci fi theme "how would we rebuild modern industrial capacity in a post-apocolytic world after a massive depopulation event?" It needs to become self sustaining.
We should mine the moon and asteroids for raw materials, and build from there. I mean from the basics. Let's start by mapping out the asteroid belt exhaustively and identifying sources for all of the materials we need. We need to smelt ore in space. We need to start large scale biomass creation and harvesting in space. Because right now the moon is the most accessible source of water we know of in space, the moon is a critical early component of this.
Given the choice between establishing a foothold of the human race off of Earth, and eliminating poverty or cancer, give me space any day.
Moonstalk (Score:2)
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Regolith is the loose rock and dust that covers most of the moon's surface
There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon, but I suspect companies such as Weyland-Yutani may find it a worth while exercise for research purposes.
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- Dan.
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Let concord sort it out.
- Dan.
Re:Regolith? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon
It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon.
Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) [wikipedia.org]
Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.
Re:Regolith? (Score:4, Informative)
For others who didn't know about that discovery:
http://www.space.com/6904-uranium-moon.html [space.com]
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There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon
It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon. Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) [wikipedia.org] Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.
I agree with your first suggestion, but am a bit of wary of the last one (when a power-beam operator says "oopsie" because he's just let the beam track across Manhattan...well that would be more than a minor incident.)
On the other hand, building a fleet of real spaceships using the Orion propulsion principle to explore the solar system—and maybe even further out—is something that I think would be super-worthwhile. Of course, exploring would not be the only purpose of such a fleet. Others would
Helium3 (Score:2)
"There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon"
Helium-3 could be worth it, if mankind is able to harness fusion for power production. At least it's aneutronic and the Coulomb barrier isn't as high as with Boron.
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Sounds good to me. Let's send them all there.
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Sounds good to me. Let's send them all there.
O2 sold separately..
Re:So what is there of value to mine? (Score:4, Informative)
woo..
gonna need some specifics before I get behind this project.
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The concept isn't necessarily that there's stuff up there and that's incredibly valuable (say, unobtainium [wikia.com]). It's also that there's more common ores that are not stuck at the bottom of a deep gravity well.
The general idea is to build big spaceships in Earth orbit. But the raw materials still have to come from Earth, which means they're going to be expensive to get up into orbit (assuming you use rockets to get them up there). But you can get the same raw materials from the Moon, it's much less expensive
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Printer ink.
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Except for the little fact that we have NO FUSION POWER technology, you are right! But since when did reality and practical engineering ever get in the way of Space Nutters?
You know, anti-matter is even more betterer than Helium 3 it's not funny. See? It's easy to write childish and delusional things down. Now go do it.
Hang on, mate: Helium 2 is the the besterest way to go
If pooling He-2 in quantities large enough, the strong interaction anomaly (which makes possible the very existence of Helium-2) adds up and will act as a catalyst for creating anti-matter! How can you not see it?
No, no, no, naw.... don't come to me with the BS that He-2 doesn't exists: for sure the enterpreneurs already looking to getting a slice of the Moon aren't that stupid to throw the money of others in pointless ventures, they are endorsed by no o
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I think the idea is that if you dig up water on the moon, you can electrolyze it and use it as rocket propellant to get you to other locations (like mars, or wherever) less expensively than launching from the earth. Here is a nifty depiction of the potential benefit [xkcd.com].
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"Wtf do they expect to find gold, diamonds, platinum?"
I would certainly expect to find Selenium, of course.
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mmmmmmmmmm moon powder.
Wtf do they expect to find gold, diamonds, platinum?
No, buddy, just RTFA. Le'me quote for you:
The presence of lunar water, as well as other potentially lucrative resources such as helium 2 and rare Earth elements, might spur a new race to the Moon that would dwarf the previous one. The inspiration will be as much commercial as scientific and a desire to enhance national prestige and security.
I took the liberty of emphasising some words in the quote above... I'm totally shaken, almost crying of shame... how could I not see it!! Not contributing with at least my next year's salary to this commercial venture is un-patriotic and on the fringe of qualifying me as a terrorist!
Quick, lets follow the suggestion of the same author (the gianterest mind in the all the worlds... not even recognized enough [yahoo.com]: only a BA in history??! You gotta be kidd'n' me, right?)...
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"There's no magnetosphere around the Moon. It's not healthy for humans to hang out there for too long. How are you going to justify shielding humans to work as miners"
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that they talk about robotic resource extraction?
"when it's one of the most unglamorous, unskilled and low-paid jobs on Earth"
What Earth are you talking about? Minering might be unglamorous but you can bet it's neither unskilled nor low-paid. And if we talk about minery on challenging conditions