8 Jul 2011

Plans to strip mine the moon may soon be more than just science

It may not be long before we start mining the moon for its resources, particularly the rare Helium-3 for its use in nuclear fusion. 'When things cost us a lot of money to lift from the Earth it’s better that we get it in space’.

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Billions of tonnes of resources, ranging from water to gases to metals, have been detected on the Moon and further out into space, and both governments and private companies are navigating the ambiguous legal parlance to determine how to reach, extract and distribute it all. 
Vast quantities of the isotope Helium-3 are known to exist on the Moon, as well as in the atmospheres of planets like Jupiter, and could come into high demand as the essential fuel for the so-called 'golden dream' of nuclear fusion power.
While existing nuclear fission plants break apart atoms and harvest the excess energy, nuclear fusion combines atoms of hydrogen to create helium, a process that releases vast amounts of energy.

See The Ecologist for full article