WITHSince time immemorial, the moon has awakened something in humanity – love, longing, surprise, fear and much more. Now we can add another human emotion to those that our luminous celestial neighbor begs from us: greed.
Astronomers have long known that the Moon and its thin outer layer of soil called regolithcontains many potentially useful resources. Now companies are clamoring to get their little piece of the moon pie in hopes of recycling moon dust. into a stable profit stream.
More recently, the most popular commodity on the Moon has been helium-3, a stable isotope of a noble gas that solar winds deposited on the Moon in quantities far greater than those found on Earth. Helium-3 could serve as fuel for future fusion reactors and, more importantly, as a critical component in the high-tech refrigerators needed to cool quantum computers.
Recently, Bluefors, a cryogenics company based in Finland, signed a $300 million deal with a lunar mining startup called Interlune to purchase up to 265 gallons of helium-3 annually between 2028 and 2037. Following this deal, Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced its plan to create a complex map of the resources contained on the Moon, including helium-3, water ice and a variety of rare earth elements and precious metals. The Moon is also known to be rich in many elements, especially iron, oxygen and silicon.
Read more: “The moon is full of money»
But as companies and countries race to mine the moon, making such ventures financially feasible is another matter entirely. “The new moon race will not be won by the country that plants boots and flags on the lunar surface,” wrote Mustafa Bilal, a research fellow at the Islamabad Center for Aerospace Industry and Security, in a recent report. SpaceNews piece“but one who builds the infrastructure to maintain a long-term presence and generate economic dividends.”
The fact is that traveling to the Moon is incredibly expensive, especially on a spaceship loaded with heavy-duty equipment that would be needed to mine the resources, much less transport those trophies and machines back to Earth. One 2004 evaluate believed that a round trip from the Earth to the surface of the Moon cost about $1,000 per pound. And that's probably on the low side.
As technology advances at breakneck speed, the days of the moon are just as far away tugging at the heartstrings most likely numbered. Let's hope that any extraction from this wealth will leave at least something that will continue to stand out like a large pizza pie.
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Main image: NASA/JPL.
