Posted on 12/27/2005 5:33:07 PM PST by KevinDavis
The president of RSC Energia, Nikolay Sevastiyanov, has spoken frankly about Russian ambitions on their unofficial version of the America's Vision for Space Exploration.
The flamboyant - yet influential - president is under no illusions about the 2012-2014 timeline it would take for his company to support Russia’s first manned mission to the Moon, including the mining of isotope helium-3 by 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasaspaceflight.com ...
I am with Sevastiyanov. We should be looking to do things in space besides explore.
Personally, I think it should be an international effort.
It should be private, which it would be if property rights existed in outer space.
You're a little more optimistic than I am. I don't think there is any money to be made in lunar or interplanetary exploitation within the next 100 or 200 years. The best you can hope for is that the scientific spin offs will justify it. And those cannot easily be made the subject of private R&D, at least not without public investment.
Yes and no. A private venture, with capital from any source.
But still private, and preferably US-based. . .
It doesn't matter how many don't see how to do it. All it takes is one who does see. At the moment, the 1967 Treaty is the only impediment to space development; if we wait for gov't to get around to it, it will take forever.
The US Senate and the White House both know that the 1967 Treaty stands in the way of private industry.
Great ! Just call up the UN and I'm sure they take our taxmoney to redistribute...er, to fly to the moon as one big happy family! Right!
My view is that Mars is a waste. Focus on the moon. Use robots.
We've barely started mining the sea bed and as predicted by Julian Simon we really haven't run out of anything desperately needed yet.
And there are no magical unobtanium substances that we know of outside of earth like the fictional dilithium....
I don't see the slightest economics in the space mining of anything; anything out there we could get more of on earth for less investment if we really wanted to.
The only economic justification for mining the moon would be to use the fruit of the effort in developing the moon. It would cost hundreds of billions to move even a small amount of Earth-produced material to the moon. But if you use the material that is already there, well that's a different matter.
So you send robots to exploit the lunar resources, and build infrastructure for a later anticipated human occupation. Why humans would want to occupy the moon is another question, but maybe there would be a reason.
Google helium-3, read a couple of the articles, and get back to me.
Research indicates that a shuttle load of He-3 would power every househole in the U.S. for a year.
Now, to put on my tin foil hat, could it be possible that the big energy companies don't want He-3 brought to earth?
Practice, practice, practice.
There are just a handful of places within theoretical reach of human exploration:
the Moon
Mars
the moons of Mars (look a little dull, but will probably be explored before Mars is)
Mercury
and perhaps a few of the larger moons of the giant planets
The only reasons to go the Moon are political.
The US should set up a far side radioastronomy and conventional astronomy installation, with an uplink on the near side, and a fiber optic line connecting the two installations. Doing civil engineering on the Moon would be pretty spectacular, and would give the US a chance to (re)develop the heavy lift capability that would be needed. A permanent US presence on the Moon would probably wind up being like the ISS / STS is today, and eat NASA's entire budget, one mouthful after the other.
The other political reason is to beat the ass of the rest of the world, and to use the radioastronomy system to detect all kinds of asteroids, particularly those on the sun-side of the Earth, and those in parts of the sky invisible from the northern hemisphere.
I'd say it's very unlikely that He-3 is on the moon. Certainly more rare on the moon than on Earth.
From the first article I Googled:
Some He3 is available on Earth. It is a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which would supply us with about 300 kg of He3 and could continue to produce about 15 kg per year. The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg, and another 187 kg is mixed up with the natural gas we have stored; these sources are not renewable at any significant rate.
In their 1988 paper, Kulcinski, et al. (see ref note below), estimate a total of 1,100,000 metric tonnes of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind in the lunar regolith. Since the regolith has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, we'll probably find He3 down to depths of several meters.
The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria.
To extract He3 from the lunar soil, we heat the dust to about 600 degrees C.
We get most of the other volatiles out at the same time, so we'll be heating up the rocks anyway.
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