Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Mining The Moon

Here's a company that wants to mine the moon:

Among the moon's vast riches: gold, cobalt, iron, palladium, platinum, tungsten and Helium-3, a gas that can be used in future fusion reactors to provide nuclear power without radioactive waste.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/102481246


Hey buddy, all you gotta do is figure out how to get there and back.


By the way, the phrase "to provide nuclear power without radioactive waste" is complete horseshit:

  • Firstly, the contraption which will contain the fusion reaction will become intensely radioactive, will have a short working life, and will have to be disposed of in the radwaste dump in West Texas and guarded forever. And I mean FOREVER.
  • Secondly, my roommate at US Navy OCS later went on to become Program Manager for the National Ignition Facility (i.e., the US prototype "fusion reactor"). According to him, "ignition remains a challenge and an opportunity". In other words, they can't even get the thing started.

The Manhattan Project figured out the A-bomb relatively quickly. The H-bomb came soon after. The fusion reactor concept has been chased after longer than both of them put together, and still no one has succeeded in making it work. I have no doubt it will be done some day, but I don't think I'll live to see it.


By the way, another former shipmate of mine is an ex-DARPA scientist who wants to mine asteroids. Also feasible, but unless the cost of getting there and back is reduced considerably such a thing is not too practical either.

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