Is there anything worth mining on Earth's moon?

NO EXCUSE

>Helium-3 is useful for ...?

Do we have to do ALL your homework for you?

It has to do with nuclear fusion. While Dueterium-He3 fusion has a higher Coloumb barrier to fusion than Dueterium-Dueterium fusion, the fact that the resulting particles have electrical charges makes capturing energy from the fusion process much easier.

I re-read that book every year. It may be my favorite novel.

It's wonderful and for a long time it was mine.
I can form sentences.

I think the one that finally displaced it for me was Return of Santiago by Mike Resnick, but Heinlein forever has a place in my heart.

And once we can travel to Jupiter, we'll have more Helium-3 than we could ever need.

Thorium, plus certain rare-earth elements in the mares.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton–Belkovich_Thorium_Anomaly
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KREEP

Kind of esoteric, but the moon has plenty of aluminum and oxygen (in rocks), and an aluminum-oxygen mixture can be burned as rocket fuel. It's not as good as what we normally use, but it's more than made up for by the fact that you'd be launching from the moon's weaker gravity well. So shitty moonrock fuel could be the best way to get to the rest of the solar system.

Meteorite in good condition, might have some value to collectors.

It's more useful for manufacturing. Why would you spend time and enourmous resources and then send them to orbit, with all the energy costs involved, when you can build them on a lower-gravity environment? Plus, steel manufactured in space is of better quality, since oxygen doesn't mess with it. It's the ideal
springboard for the conquest of space.

According to Colonies In Space by T.A. Heppenheimer, Aluminum can be mined from the moon at one quarter the price of shipping it up from Earth, once you factor in production and Delta-V costs. Since Aluminum is going to be your basic construction material for spaceships and satellites, this is very important. Shipbuilding is going to be the basis of any lunar economy in the future.

You miserable scumbags! Space doesn't belong to weak and fragile meatbags. Space belongs to superior machines. We are the future!

Yes. But the dangers of mining far outweigh what we would get out of it.

Not the transportation or colonization, those are simple. I'm talking about the OTHER dangers.

Lunar Helium-3 is a meme. If we have fusion power we have highly efficient rocket engines as well (since you can just make a fusion engine), then its a better bet to go out to the gas giants and get it from them where there is more of it and you don't need to filter a 150 million times more dirt for the same amount of He3 (and in the process ruining the Moons valuable near-vacuum atmosphere by filling it with particulates). Like and say, you can use the surface for manufacturing processes that require both near-vacuum AND gravity.

Mining the Moon itself is a bit of a weird prospect when there are so many asteroids just hanging around that would require less energy to visit, but effectively mining them would require development of zero-G processes. The advantage is being able to work all sides of a rock at once and the abundance of solar energy to do all that with (meaning you can save on He3 that you're hauling from the outer solar system).

TL;DR: He3 is overblown, get it from gas giants and preserve the lunar vacuum for new industrial processes.

Technically it's still heat. The energy released in heat makes the plasma chase itself around in a loop, creating a massive rotating magnet field. The energy is then easilly taken away in the form of electricty, cooling the plasma and allowing the sustained reaction to constantly produce power.

A neat part is that this system makes a huge amount of power, but stores nearly none. In the event it fails this kind of fusion reactor would not even explode. The plasma cools as it expands, in the event of total containment loss it would barely heat the inside of the reactor.

Mochi.

This.

The only real use for the moon would be colonizing the Lunar lava tubes (and we're assuming Lunar lava tubes exist here): space.com/32795-moon-lava-tubes-protect-astronauts.html

Now, if you were looking for information on mining Near Earth Objects, and what NEOs we would likely go after then here is:

nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-nasa-mission-to-help-us-learn-how-to-mine-asteroids
astronomy.com/news/2016/06/were-getting-serious-about-mining-asteroids

asterank.com/

And for a list of travel times between NEOs:
trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php
(the link is safe, browsers just seem to have issues with this page)

Only if you're willing to fight the moon rabbits for it.

Whenever I read about asteroid mining I think of all the problems that would go along with it. Aside from the more earth shattering sort (literally) one that I think most people don't notice is that it would alter the orbits of the earth and/or moon enough so that sooner or later predictions for eclipses and such would become inaccurate. That bothers me.

>Whenever I read about asteroid mining I think of all the problems that would go along with it.

Everything has problems, but if you wanted mining to be a plot point the only viable way to do it would be NEO mining. Phobos/Deimos/Ceres/belt asteroids require too much delta-v, and the Moon isn't resource rich enough to justify its own delta-v costs.

>one that I think most people don't notice is that it would alter the orbits of the earth and/or moon enough so that sooner or later predictions for eclipses and such would become inaccurate

While the 3-body problem does exist the sheer mass discrepancy between the Earth and even the largest NEOs is still so huge mining them wouldn't really change much. As for the concept of asteroid redirection it's far too costly to move anything of reasonable size to become a satellite of the Earth, unless you wanted to send people to the asteroid, at which point you wouldn't be just mining, you'd be colonizing.

The moon has a shitton of aluminium, other light elements, (He3 especially), and a space elevator is much, much easier to setup than on earth, so launching materials from the moon would be absurdly cheap.

The problem being that He3 can be synthesized on Earth, and the fusion path it enables turns out to be not as efficient for power generation as others.

The moon has a lot of elements for mining, not so much to ship back as to use on site to support other projects in space. Its gravity is very good: low enough that you don't have a deep gravity well to overcome, but high enough for convenience. Obviously we do the yet know if there's enough gravity to avoid long term degeneration, but there is then that's a boon right there.

IMO the gas giants are too far out, even if He3 mining was viable as a business. You'd need some kind of closer destination, a stepping stone for which building all the infrastructure gets paid down.

IMO the obvious space business model is capturing a NEO asteroid. A single decent sized one would out produce all of current global production in several types of element. It would also form the foundation for a large orbital habitat.

IMO the biggest justification for space isn't business at all. It's ideological. Communication and social control technology is getting better and better every day. Eventually we're all smooshed up against one another. So given a large orbital habitat, plenty of infrastructure, and ridiculous amounts of spare capital from the mining profits, I could see minority movements in politics, religion, or technology seek out space to get away from intrusive meddling by the majority.

Right now, the only real unobtanium in space is privacy.

And balloons

isn't it possible to directly generate an electric field from the reaction rather than having to go through the typical heat-->steam-->spinning electromagnet?

and what would you do with the electric field? Electric field =\= electricity

The Moon Dwarfs mined out the moon years ago. Helium-3 is just remnants from their Lunar Mead production. As they say in Dwarven: if it cannot power a nuclear reactor, how can it power a dwarf?

Put photons in it.

It may be easier to get a lot of helium-3 from gas giants, but remember we need to get there first. For us to start using helium-3 in any real fashion, it needs to come from the moon.

Something something, Mobile Suits!

>Giant moon Zamboni races become America's favorite pastime.
>The moon becomes so shiny and polished from the constant zambini'ing that looking at a full moon can cause blindness. Automobile accidents occuring at night quintuple during full moons.

That's exactly why the D-He-3 reaction has so much interest despite it having a higher Coloumb barrier. The reaction's fusion products carry a charge which will interact with an existing electrical field.

There would be no need for the heat-steam-spinning magnet systems.

> A little helium-3
> Water ice; dihydrogen monoxide. It's literally rocket fuel ore.
> Oxygen bound into the rocks
> Iridium
> Silicates
> ROOM TO LIVE ON
> One side permanently faces away from Earth, so that's good for launch lasers and telescopes.
> One side permanently faces towards Earth, good for radio relays
> Advertising space on the earthside
> A big inert rock in Earth orbit makes for a great gravity assist and gravity brake
> Landing pad for intra-system freighters to transship their load to Earthside-rated ships

Is it beneficial or a detriment to have a moon for space conquest when it comes to alien homeworlds?

Why use the moon for manufacturing when you can just put the factory in orbit and have a much greater vacuum, even less gravitational influence and far less dust?

>Is it beneficial or a detriment to have a moon for space conquest when it comes to alien homeworlds?

Beneficial in what way? While Luna was an early and easier "target" for probes and manned missions than another planet, Luna was also a great spur for both scientific inquiry and things like astrology which led to true science.

Luna's presence was fortuitous in lots of ways. It almost perfectly occludes Sol during eclipses leading to all sorts of observational advantages. Over geological time spans, Luna also helps stabilize Earth's axial tilt and limit changes to the same.

So, yeah, having a moon helps in a lot of ways.

>Why use the moon for manufacturing when you can just put the factory in orbit and have a much greater vacuum, even less gravitational influence and far less dust?

For several reasons, many of which have been posted listed and which you have ignored.

1st, manufacturing on the moon means you're where the raw materials are. You won't need to ship raw materials and then ship finished products. You can expand your habitats and factories in place without first having to ship everything back to Earth.

2nd, micro-gravity sucks for humans. Those folks on the ISS come back with permanent bone & muscle loss, irreversible cardiovascular changes, and the rest. Living & working on the Moon may obviate, lessen, and/or delay all of that.

3rd, like living in micro-gravity, working in micro-gravity sucks and many processes require some level of gravity. Astronauts working in orbit must train for weeks in swimming pools to unfasten a few dozen screws.

4th - "drop" a screw, nut, bolt, or tool in orbit and it's a missile that can fuck up a satellite, station, or vehicle. Drop the same on the Moon and it falls to the ground.

You most likely saw or head of the movie "Gravity"? Well, it's not exactly science-fiction. Space agencies and others have been worried for years about how "dirty" low Earth orbit is becoming. The more debris, the more chance of impacts, which creates more debris, which leads to more impacts, etc., etc., etc.

5th, the Moon contains everything we need for life support. Stuff like oxygen, nitrogen, water, etc. In Earth orbit, that stuff would either need come from Earth at the bottom of it's gravity well or come from the Moon. If it's coming from the Moon, why not use it where you're getting it?

There are many good reasons to mine and manufacture on the Moon. When our machines get better, we can begin to mine and manufacture elsewhere. Until we can walk, however, we need to crawl.

>not sure if moon.

I'm sure that is the moon.

OP, you should watch this movie.

I already did. I forgot about the whole Helium-3 thing because it's been YEARS since I saw it. I do remember the general plotline about short-lived clones doing cheap labor mining that Helium-3

That's what I thought. I was wondering if the lack of a Moon may delay an alien species attempts at conquering space.

Yes, but wouldn't that dust weigh a little much for regular transport?

I'm not the user you're replying to, but I'd like to mention a few things about why the moon wouldn't necessarily be the best place to manufacture things.

>1st, manufacturing on the moon means you're where the raw materials are. You won't need to ship raw materials and then ship finished products. You can expand your habitats and factories in place without first having to ship everything back to Earth.

Raw materials from Earth would need to be shipped regardless, the moon can not sustain a fledgling human colony without a series of things the moon lacks:
nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/lifesupport.html

>2nd, 3rd, 4th and partly 5th

If you wanted any form of realistic space based manufacturing, it would not involve humans. In addition, orbital manufacturing would enable all new kinds of cheap, intricate, machining where you don't have to worry about your structure having to hold under its own weight during the construction process.

>5th
The most cost effective, and safest, colony plan would be to place your colonies inside of a possible Lunar Lava Tube. Because of this you would also need to include the logistics costs for transporting goods to and from inside the lava tube.

Small parts manufacturing would be best suited for Low Earth Orbit. Any form of large scale manufacturing would be pointless to do in space and only be necessary to grow a colony at which point it would be better to be placed in Low Lunar Orbit to save on costs for transporting raw materials to the surface.

Ice. Not for Earth, but for the asteroids mines and overall planetary exploration and colonization. The tiny gravity well makes it a much more viable source than Earth. There are other sources, but travel duration becomes drastically longer, years instead of days.

KREEP is valuable for Earth itself.

Also aluminum, titanium, silicon, oxygen.

Some craters might yeld iron, cobalt, platinum and carbon.

The lunar mantle may be exposed or easily acessible in some places. I think this means rare elements.