this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Cover author: Michał Kałużny http://astrofotografia.pl/
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Helium-3; copious amounts in the lunar crust - but it's filtered out by our atmosphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Helium-3
"Materials on the Moon's surface contain helium-3 at concentrations estimated between 1.4 and 15 parts per billion (ppb) in sunlit areas,[1][61][62] and may contain concentrations as much as 50 ppb in permanently shadowed regions.[63] For comparison, helium-3 in the Earth's atmosphere occurs at 7.2 parts per trillion (ppt)."
Stretching the use of the word copious here... Helium 3 is specifically what I was thinking of when I said "the only exceptions would still be so rare as to require gigantic energy inputs."... Also, utilizing it would require fusion technology we don't have yet.
Listen, going to the moon and space travel is neat and all... There's just no way space mining makes money with current tech.
There are several institutes that differ from your opinion on abundance and profitability. There is an estimated millions of tons of helium-3 in the lunar surface at just a few meters down and it's estimated that just 25 tons would suffice to fuel the US power consumption for a year, and 200 ton for global needs.
Regardless of helium-3, establishing the infrastructure will allow for other mining as well. Platinum and other rare earth metals. Whoever does it first is going to make a butt load of money.
@zhunk
@McBinary
Hopefully one of these firms is correct... I suspect these companies are mostly looking to make money from their investors and not for their investors. But hey, that's how our economy works at this point; mostly speculation, less so results.
I hope so too. I just want to see some space faring progress in my lifetime. I missed the boat and am too dumb to contribute, but I can hope greed can bridge the gap where basic human progress fails to meet expansionist ideals. If it has to begin on the backs of investor money, at least it gets the ball rolling.
AstroForge thinks they can make asteroid mining work with existing technology. Their CEO did a podcast with Payload a few weeks ago (link, but it's also on Spotify and elsewhere).
They have a demo sat testing their forge and will launch a 2nd sat later this year to do an asteroid flyby. They think they can launch 20+ satellites on a Falcon 9 that could each return $100 million in platinum to the Earth.