The news is full of it, excitement seems high, and I really don’t get it. I’m not against space-related research, but why suddenly the moon? And why send people there? Can someone fill me in on what’s to be gained or why one might be excited about it?
Allow me to use the linked article for my questions.
There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.
Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon 🤯. Then what’s so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?
A second factor has been the rise of China’s space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA’s Artemis Program and China’s lunar station goals.
Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?
Finally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly.
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies 😊
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right?
No, there is a resource on the moon that could be a game changer for humanity. Heluim-3.
What is He3?
He3 is produced in the sun and arrives at the moon via the solar wind, which constantly hits the moon due to no atmosphere or magnetic field to absorb or deflect it.
The earth has basically zero He3 as the solar wind is deflected by the earth’s magnetic field.
Why could it be important?
He3 is a very good fuel for Fusion.
The 2009 movie, Moon, centres around a future He3 mining operation.
The earth has basically zero He3 as the solar wind is deflected by the earth’s magnetic field.
We actually have quite a bit of it here on Earth. Much of it comes from old sources, like our first lithium on Earth when the planet was still a ball of molten material. Many of the neutrons from space directly impacted our earilest lithium desposits that were exposed to the vaccum of space. This created a lot of Helium-3 via spallation. A lot of that newly created Helium was vented directly into space never to return, however some became trapped.
The problem of that is, much of that gas is trapped deep in pockets too close to the mantle for anything manmade to ever reach. So we must wait for cracks to form allowing the gas to rise up away from the incredibly hot mantle to somewhere machines can access.
Additionally, we have Uranium and Thorium in the core of the planet emitting Helium-3/4 as a decay product. For pretty much the same reason with the exception that the core is MUCH deeper than the mantle, we’re unable to access that gas and must wait for it to slowly bubble up.
We do also have some that’s been “frozen” in underwater soil as a result of underwater nuclear bomb testing. However that is mostly inaccessible to us due to the contamination of the soil of much deadlier material also “frozen” in place there. Which also means that we can produce Helium-3 ourselves, but it comes at a massive cost. So finding a natural deposit would be ideal.
He3 is a very good fuel for Fusion.
Uh, sort of. D + He-3 fusion is what’s touted as ideal. The product of the fusion reaction is 50/50 of He + p + 18.3 MeV and He + 2p + 12.86 MeV. The thing is, the deutrium cannot be always assured to mix with the Helium-3 100% of the time. So you will have some D+D fusion which will result in neutrons.
The is also a He-3 + He-3 fusion which provides no path for neutrons. However, the activation tempature is much higher and you must keep the reaction at a hotter tempature (requires stronger magnets that must be massively cooled). If we were ever to go for pure He-3 fusion, it would be likely a 3rd or 4th gen reactor design. There’s a ton of challenges to making it commerically viable.
Thaf is too far back. I promise you, this is what they want.
From your link: Changesite
“The lunar crystal is made of material previously unknown to the scientific community and contains a key ingredient for the nuclear fusion process”
“One of the primary ingredients found in this crystal is helium-3, which scientists believe may provide a stable fuel source for nuclear fusion reactors.”
Yeah… i saw. My bad.
All good. I had never heard the name before so reading it was “Ah, that’s the Chinese name for it”.
How is He3 a good fusion fuel?
There are two possible uses of He3 in fusion power.
Deuterium + Helium-3 yields the highest energy of possible fuels.
Helium-3 + Helium-3 lower yield but produces no neutrons. This makes designing a fusion power plant much easier.
Deuterium + Helium-3 yields the highest energy of possible fuels.
Yes, but the probability of fusion is lower and also requires 5 times more energy for fusion to occur.
https://youtu.be/2DzKXN1pcwY?t=189
Thus, it requires a lot higher temperature to get the same result as D-T fusion.
https://youtu.be/2DzKXN1pcwY?t=515
The video doesn’t talk about He3-He3 fusion, though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/2DzKXN1pcwY?t=189
https://piped.video/2DzKXN1pcwY?t=515
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
The biggest issue we have with D-T fusion power is the supply of Tritium.
“Roughly one in every 5000 hydrogen atoms in the oceans is deuterium, and it sells for about $13 per gram. But tritium, with a half-life of 12.3 years, exists naturally only in trace amounts in the upper atmosphere, the product of cosmic ray bombardment. Nuclear reactors also produce tiny amounts, but few harvest it.”
“In order to breed tritium you need a working fusion reactor, and there may not be enough tritium to jump-start the first generation of power plants. The world’s only commercial sources are the 19 Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) nuclear reactors, which each produce about 0.5 kilograms a year as a waste product, and half are due to retire this decade.”
There is no easy path to fusion, there is only ~25kg of Tritium on earth, while there are millions of kg of He3, but it is on the moon.
Neither option is ideal.
I’m sure they’ll get enough to start at least experimental fusion reactors. And if experimental D-T reactors are too difficult to make so they produce electricity, then there’s no chance we can make one using much less efficient fuels.
My bad. It seems like both are the reason because helium-3 is also found IN changesite.
The moon is a great launching point. And the water (ice) could be converted to fuel for rockets.
Basically with a permanent moon base we could send much bigger payloads, could refuel rockets before sending them out further into the solar system, could set up observatories that wouldn’t be affected by the atmosphere, could collect solar energy and send it back to earth via microwaves. Not to mention all the geological science, spelunking, and moon golf we could be doing.
There’s all kinds of things we could do.
To further clarify, one of the big reasons we don’t do much in space is because it’s really expensive to get stuff up there, even with the reduced costs from reusable rockets. After a certain point it’s cheaper to make a base on the moon, build stuff there and launch it to do whatever you wanted to do than it is to do it here and launch it into space. That it would also reduce the impact on the environment at some point is also a plus.
Of course, all of that requires the resources be available on the moon. We already know the moons composition is similar to earth’s, but we weren’t sure about water. Now that we know water is there, we have everything we need to have lunar industry.
Imagine the far side of the moon dotted with radio telescopes that make Arecibo look like a digital satellite dish…
I wonder how much stuff we need to deposit on the surface to start fucking with the orbit and create yet another global disaster.
Hate to disappoint, but it’s far more than you could possibly imagine. You could dump the equivalent mass of the entire human civilization, every single person and everything we’ve ever made, on the Moon and it wouldn’t have a noticeable effect.
Not disappointed at all. I was wondering how much and the answer was a whole lot, which is kind of what I was expecting.
If we launch rockets from the moon we might push the moon back and it will crash into earth
This cracked me up, thank you
The moon is actually slowly moving away from earth.
I don’t blame it
We could also, like, ya know, try using all this magic technology to fix Earth?
All this space hype adds up to is humans looking to run away from their own problems. Run where though? To a dead rock?
If we can’t keep the living rock running and thriving, we sure can’t make a dead rock live. Ever tried to plant grass or an apple seed on the moon?..
Progress in one field often results in progress elsewhere, too. Apart from that, people working on projects on the moon would probably do the same work here, just under less good circumstances. It really is not a question of “throw enough money/personnel at the problems”. What needs to be done on earth is very different from what’s going on up there.
The money though. If they are not going to pry the money out of billionaires, it has to come from somewhere (less well off people). Those are arguably better spent to improve situations on the earth than on something that’s likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthy as their plaything, extra income, escape or whatever. Especially because it should be clear to everyone except the absolute dumbest and delusional people how critical action is right now.
The USA spends 2.01 Trillion of its 6.1 Trillion USD budged on military annually. That’s roughly 1/3 of its cash. If I were to repurpose some money for other purposes, such as fixing the infrastructure, that’s probably where I’d start. Now, that’s probably an argument everyone has heard so many times, you’ll have gotten sick of it 20 years ago, but stricter regulations on taxation for ultrarich people, for example, would bring in more cash, and cracking down more on monopolies would help competition, ie. lead to more employment, and more sensible redistribution of money overall could help the environment, education and health of the people, and we wouldn’t have touched space programs yet.
Then there’s the argument that every Cent disappearing in private pockets, of which the overwhelming share (4.5 Trillion USD in the USA alone, as much as 2/3 of the country’s yearly budget) goes to its 735 billionaires, is money lost to people. There are many ways to get more money, distribute it more productively (as in: better education, healthcare etc) than stuffing the pockets of a handful of people who then spend it on leisure projects. Every 5th or 6th yacht could finance not only one, but at least 10 schools or hospitals, and every 10th mansion would be enough to run homeless programs or battle drug addiction.
The fraction of money spent on space is negligible. It also has a ROI and provides real advances in tech and produces high-value work and income for people (which in turn leads to additional income).
It’s really debatable if it’s wise to start with space programs when it comes to redistribute money. And that’s just the USA. Imagine the whole world came to its senses.
I think you are missing the point. The point isn’t where the money is spent the most. The point is money has to come from somewhere. And yes, ideally it would be redirected from billionaires, mega-corps and military budget, but that’s currently not happening. The money spent on space exploration is at least somewhere in the same vein as the ones spent on the environment, other researches etc. They are for the sake of making progress. Let’s look at a hypothetical situation where space exploration is getting more traction again (more than now).
- Attention will be diverted from environmental impact on earth.
- Budget redirected to space exploration also has to come from somewhere, and it’s also unlikely to be from military budget.
And that’s the problem.
I don’t want to run away from our problems. I want to run away from other humans.
I hear ya there, but in the long run you can’t run away from yourself.
You are a human as well right?
I try not to be
Username checks out. And I see what you mean :/
The worst thing about humanity is all the humans
A lot of technology that people now rely on everyday has roots in NASA, take a look at some of the NASA spinoff technologies
These are real ways that NASA technology is helping earth now.
Remember that the core of space exploration involves keeping people alive. Basically everything NASA does has applications for people here on earth and those technologies and advancements do come back around to us.
Scientific advancement isn’t a straight line, it takes steps forward and backwards and long circuitous loops around. Think of how many headlines you’ve seen about “scientists working on X accidentally discover Y” those scientists may not always pursue Y further at that time but that opens the door for other scientists to pick it up and keep moving forward.
We are made out of the same basic stuff as the moon, as Mars, Venus, Jupiter, the sun, everything in the universe is made of the same stuff and plays by the same rules. Understanding what’s happening elsewhere in space helps us to better understand what’s happening here on Earth and how to fix our problems.
Also imagine trying to tackle things like climate change without the ability to monitor and measure the causes from satelites.
And NASA creates billions of dollars of economic output and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, rockets and laboratories don’t build and maintain themselves, so we’re not just throwing money into a hole. There are a lot of people that are directly dependent on NASA for their livelihood.
And whether we like it or not, someday we will no longer be able to live on earth, whether by our own doing, because the sun burns out in 5 billion years, an asteroid impact, a gama ray burst, etc. The universe is a hostile place and we’re living in a fragile little bubble. We hopefully won’t have to worry about that for a long, long time, but we don’t truly know how long our little blue paradise will last, and we need to have backup plans before then. It’s time to start planting trees under whose shade we will never sit.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The climate was basically holding its own fairly well for thousands of years, until humans got a bug up their ass to create this whole industrial/scientific age.
So the answer is to send even more space rockets and satellites and stuff up there? As if launching rockets ain’t adding even more carbon dioxide and crap in the atmosphere? Hell we’ve already got so much junk in space right now satellites are already colliding with each other.
If there’s anything I’ve ever come to realize about humans, it’s that wherever we go, we’re gonna trash the place up. We haven’t even set foot on Mars yet we’ve already put our junk on it.
Quit looking at dead rocks and empty space, and figure out what to do with the trash and planned obsolescence crap going on right here on Earth.
Look at all the vehicles on the road right now. Ignore whether they’re ICE or electric, both cause pollution. It takes about one barrel of crude oil to make one average car tire, so you can’t tell me electric vehicles don’t also use oil. Plus all the pollution it takes to mine lithium, plus the extreme dangers of lithium battery explosions…
When will people realize that mass transportation isn’t a necessity, it’s a luxury? Cars, trains, airplanes, whatever, once upon a time none of that even existed, yet somehow humans survived for over 100,000 years without all that stuff.
Mass manufacturing wasn’t a thing either until fairly recent times, yet people did just fine without all our precious junk. It’s pretty much all junk when you look at the whole picture. Hell, the very device I’m typing on will probably end up in a landfill within a few years. Same with whatever you’re reading this on.
Companies don’t even want to make things that’ll last anymore, that doesn’t make them as much money. They want you to throw your crap away and buy something new. Recycling? Hah, that’s about a joke. That doesn’t make them any money either.
With about 8 billion people on the planet, politicians wanna ban women’s choice as to what to do with the contents of their uterus, as if there’s some shortage of humans. Hell that’s half the problem, there’s way too damn many of us.
If we can’t fix our problems right here on Earth first, we’re just gonna bring our problems with us wherever we go. Humans are a cancer on the Earth.
Edit: Spelling
It sounds like the suggestion you want to make is to go back to our pre-industrial state. Is that actually what you’re suggesting?
Go read my other comment under this thread. Start by banning planned obsolescence.
Link? The only comment of yours that I can see that mentions planned obsolescence is the one I replied to.
Shouldn’t be too hard to find, but here ya go…
So what’s your plan? How do you propose to solve all of our many problems?
Because if you don’t have one, you’re just complaining to hear yourself complain. And if you do have one, fucking do something to bring it to fruition besides being a contrarian asshole on a lesser-used internet forum.
I just pointed out at least one problem we can easily tackle. Completely ban planned obsolescence.
Force companies to do everything possible to stop deliberately making disposable items. Go back to designing more reliable things that last longer, are easier to repair when things fail, and make spare parts more available again.
Basically go back to making things last 10+ years if taken decent care of, quit with all this disposable shit.
Also, as far as transportation, what ever happened to the good old days of horses? Your transportation doubles as your lawn mower, meaning you don’t have to buy gasoline for your vehicle or your lawn mower.
Being more realistic about that last point, the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions mankind has ever come up with. It’ll help the environment more if people ride bicycles more often and quit going out for luxury drives and flights and crap.
Same attitude as not helping the needy from other countries because we have needy of our own here. Using money for one thing does not mean less money for another, equal, thing. Unlearn this.
I never once mentioned money, and there’s nobody on the moon to even ‘help’, whatever you mean by all that drivel.
Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?
Yes, it’s a prestige project. It’s the same reason why some countries spend billions to host competitions like the Olympics/World Cup: it’s an international dick measuring contest.
(For the record, scientific investment in space programs has incredible ROI so I whole heartedly support programs like this even if the motivation for doing so on the part of politicians is less than noble.)
Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon 🤯. Then what’s so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?
Hydrogen is common, readily available high concentration deposits of hydrogen/oxygen sources are not. The craters being in perpetual darkness does not help robotic survey and exploration since solar panels aren’t available and it’s probably very cold (although i don’t know if RTGs wouldn’t fix that)
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies 😊
if you want to make space travel and exploration more common, a refueling/refining station or production capabilities on the moon would be awesome - most of the energy we need now for that is needed to escape earths gravity well. Being able to build a space vessel on the moon would be awesome! Also, being able to extract resources on the moon would remove the ecological impact of mining from earth. And like you i always encourage our elite to follow their dreams into whatever abyss they want 😁
It’s just to preemptively have presence and if possible dominance on a new territory before everybody has established themselves. Just in case a new discovery of the usefullness of the things found in the moon is discovered in the near future and also for claim in the present known use of the things available on our moon.
it’s jst like countries holding on ot small uninhabitable islands in the ocean. a “just in case” type of thing.
Edit: I forgot to add. MOON LASERS
Space is the final frontier. It’s where we’ll be doing the rest of our exploration of the universe. The reason you would do that is not so much to discover new life and new civilizations but to discover new phenomenons and technologies that can help us better understand the universe, help us live better/easier, help us experience cool new things, etc.
The news is full of it, excitement seems high, and I really don’t get it. I’m not against space-related research, but why suddenly the moon? And why send people there? Can someone fill me in on what’s to be gained or why one might be excited about it?
It’s the closest celestial body, so it’s great for practice. Next up, Mars. Both of these are solid, so we can land there and check them out. Get an idea for what works and what doesn’t, how to build habitats in space, etc.
Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon 🤯. Then what’s so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?
Water is one of the main substances you need for life as we know it. Essentially all life on Earth needs water to some degree, so any time we find water somewhere we get excited because what if it’s alien life? Wouldn’t that be cool? Aside from that, oxygen, hydrogen, and water in space is good to have, because then you don’t have to carry it from Earth. If we set up a base on Luna, maybe we can drink water that’s already there, and use hydrogen and oxygen that’s already there to power machinery. It’s expensive as fuck to get anything into space, so if you don’t have to carry something to your destination because there’s already some there, that’s just better.
Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?
For governments, it’s part dick measuring competition, part trying to get their names in the history books, part trying to not be left behind. For scientists and the rest of us, it’s part livelihood, part curiosity. Space is hard to deal with, so we come up with all sorts of stuff to let us live up there. Here’s a list of a bunch of stuff that stems from the space race: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies 😊
There’s a bunch of shit in space that we have very little of, or is hard to reach, on Earth. Not necessarily water, I went over that earlier. But all kinds of other stuff, including He3 which is useful used in nuclear fusion.
Because the moon has no atmosphere, it gets rare elements that cost $$$$$$$$$$$ to make here on earth, which can be used for energy. As we learn more about fusion, we’ve determined some of the fuel we might eventually use can come from the moon, not to mention nearby asteroids and metals that can be used for cheap manufacturing. Space has a lot of cheap scrap metal. Like, economy crashing cheap, in some cases.
Like war, pushing into new environments requires and creates new branches or research and technology, such as better ways of recycling air, water (looking at you, Arizona, italy, india and any landlocked country), waste, etc. New medical breakthroughs such as 3D printing proteins for remote medicines and vaccines, new power sources such as micro reactors, new space infrastructure such as Skyhooks, and baby’s first terraforming research, as we are currently destroying the only known habitable planet known across roughly 13 billion light-years :)
Moon is very attractive as a staging area for missions further into the solar system. Since it has low gravity and no atmosphere, it’s much easier to launch stuff from the moon. It would also be possible to build a space elevator on the moon even using current level of technology.
The moon is also a great test for building a space colony. It’s a much more realistic prospect than trying to build one on Mars. At some point humanity will become a spacefaring species unless we make ourselves go extinct. Exploration of the Moon is the first step towards that.
It’s also worth noting that such large scale projects necessarily result in a lot of technological development that has lots of practical applications here on Earth.
Finally, I personally think that it’s good to have an ambitious vision that humanity can work towards. Space exploration is inspiring and it’s a positive vision for our future. This is something that’s sorely lacking in our world today.
Part of the Moon being a staging area is that it may end up being feasible to source material from the Moon instead of Earth. This allows for shipping materials at a much lower energy cost since we don’t need to lift off from Earth’s gravity well.
And for the space elevator, the reason why a space elevator on the far side of the Moon is valuable is because making the elevator longer than necessary could make it a good launch point for other missions. This will act as a slingshot to others entities.
Yeah, I think that creating a local mining industry on the moon will be necessary to start doing any serious projects like building a space elevator. The whole idea should be to bootstrap a colony that’s as self sufficient as possible.
Two items not mentioned:
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The cost of space launches is getting to the point where getting to the Moon is becoming economicly feasible to a larger group of nations and/or corporations. This means it is becoming a greater reality for human claims on the Moon to be created and maintained.
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There may be a decent cache of rare earth metals on the Moon. If there is, that could yield a lot of money for a space company to send these metals to Earth. Given the limited supply on Earth, it may be worth it to mine the materials in space.
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One word: Helium.
We have an ongoing shortage of Helium3 which is used in all sorts of science, medicine and tech. The moon has lots of it. We want it.
They also want the ice and water because it would so much easier to stage launches on the moon than on Earth. If there is ice or water up there, we won’t have to send any from Earth.
Much easier to mine more helium on Earth. We have plenty still at home. The shortage is not because we’re literally running out of what we have on our planet.
Helium3, not just plain helium
Somehow I feel like smashing Helium together in a particle accelerator to make He3 is a lot more expensive and a lot less efficient than just mining it offworld.
Humanity is benefited by space. Getting to space from Earth is very hard because of Earth’s gravity well. The Moon sits at the rim of Earth’s gravity well and getting to space from the Moon is comparatively much easier, saving about 97% of the energy that it would take to launch the same mass from Earth. Resources such as water can be mined on the Moon to be turned into rocket fuel (Liquid Hydrogen + Liquid Oxygen). The Moon is therefore an excellent staging ground for humanity to get a foothold in space, enabling bigger spacecraft, longer missions, and much much more activity in space. Humanity needs to expand beyond Earth for its own benefit. The Moon is the first stop to getting there.
Where else are the billionaires going to flee to once the planet’s proper fucked?
So… China found a mineral on the moon like 2 years ago that everyone seems top want actually. Called Changesite, but i don’t know why or what it does. Just that it is some kind of phosphate.
Hello sir or ma’am. I’m from the brightside corporation - can I interest you in owning a slice of paradise? Where you say? The moon!
They want rare Earth metals and minerals and such, duh.
If they are on the moon would that not make them rare moon metals?
No, they’re called rare-earth metals because they’re rare on earth. On the moon they’re just rocks.
No, they aren’t rare on earth. Most of them are quite common, it’s just that the ancient Greeks didn’t know how to extract/purify them so they called them rare. The name is 2500 years out of date, but it’s stuck.
You may have a point. But nobody has plundered those materials yet, meaning they’re not quite as rare…
Concerned about growing human and environmental rights, corporations pressure governments to create new unregulated zones to better exploit people and land.
