The race to Mine the Moon...
Back in January 2024 Japan became nation number five to complete successfully a soft landing on on the moon.
Previous successful nations to have done this include:
- The United States
- Russia
- China and
- India
In February the first private company, Intuitive Machines, put a lander on the moon, meaning we now have successful public and private lunar operations.
Looking forward more than 100 lunar missions are expected to take place by 2030 and China and Russia are planning to build bases by 2035.
Why the acceleration of interest in the moon..?
Technological advances are the first reason: rapid developments in rocket design, satellite and electronic tech mean it's now much cheaper to get to the moon.
The pull is resources which we may be able to exploit... Chief among these is water, which could potentially be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen, both useful for further space exploration. The existence of water also means establishing permanent bases for mining the moon is feasible.
And on the moon's surface there are both gold and platinum as well as valuable rare-earth minerals such as lithium.
But perhaps the most important thing is helium-3, a rare isotope of helium not found on earth but which could provide clean and stable nuclear energy.
How is all of this going to work legally...???
That's the rub... back in 1967 the UN's Outer Space Treaty stated that no country could ever claim sovereignty over the moon, but then in 2020 the US drafted the Artemis Accords which have been signed by 36 countries and state that a country can establish exclusive 'safety zones' on the moon.
NB Russia and China haven't signed.
This all sounds like America is planning on colonising the moon, carving out the best bits for companies aligned to it.
Jeff Bezos' blue Origin is spending $3bn developing a lunar lander capable of carrying four tonnes of equipment in one go.
Meanwhile both Russia and China have their own plans.
It all sounds like it's going to get VERY messy up there!
Postscript
NB if we can harvest and refine Helium-3 there is apparently enough of it to meet all our earthly energy needs for the next 10K years.
The problem is that we'll probably end up just tearing shreds out of each other rather than working together to achieve this goal!
Header 3Sources
Adapted from The Week, Issue 1479
Image source:
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
58 years have already passed since the first soft landing on the Moon. How long ago it was.
I am more interested in Mars mission as I believe that they will make some part of Mars habitable somehow and take the human race to there.
There seems to be a lot of talk about mining the Moon and asteroids. I'm not sure how that will go given the mess we make of our own planet. Launching lots of rockets puts out all sorts of crap. We need those space elevators I read about years ago.
Yeah, let's go to the moon and fuck it up like we have with our own planet; what could go wrong.
Also, what a great place to continue warring between ourselves and accelerating our inevitable demise. Same battle, different battlefield.
Humans, masters of the universe.
Unfortunately I can only see this increasing conflict! Another massive waste of resources!
Yep, we agree on that for sure.
I'd much rather if everyone just left the Moon as is.
It might be easier!
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It is a fact that no country has benefited from the war so far and only lives have been lost, children die and women die, so two countries should not fight each other at all.
I'm always worried we are going to mine too much out of the moon and then it wont hold the balance anymore and either fly away or come crashing to earth lol
I think it's got a large enough mass for that not to be a concern!