Moon could be a $1 trillion treasure trove of precious metals – A lunar gold rush may be on the horizon as a study suggests asteroid collisions have scattered platinum and minerals
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/moon-could-be-a-treasure-trove-of-precious-metals-say-scientists-nts6mg59b
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From the article
Scientists believe that billions of years of asteroid impacts have seeded the lunar surface with a fortune hiding in plain sight: precious metals potentially worth $1 trillion.
The estimate — described by the team behind it as “conservative” — stems from a study that surveyed the moon’s pockmarked terrain and calculated how many of its craters were likely to have been formed by asteroids rich in platinum group metals (PGMs): ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum itself.
Also from the article
However, mining on the moon would present formidable technical hurdles. With only a sixth of Earth’s gravity, traditional extraction techniques that rely on weight, pressure or fluid dynamics would be difficult to apply. There is also no liquid water — a particular challenge, since most terrestrial PGM refining methods are water-intensive. Engineers would need to radically rethink how to extract and process ore in a dry vacuum.
Yet our satellite offers logistical advantages that asteroids — another potential source of mineral wealth — cannot. It is close enough for near real-time remote operation of machinery. Robots could be directed from Earth with just a few seconds’ communications delay, avoiding the need for fully autonomous systems, which would probably be essential for asteroid mining.
Yeah let’s remove mass from the moon. Zero consequences I’m sure
$1 trillion in minerals, $3 trillion to get Sam Rockwell to bring them back.
Or approximately 3% of the U.S National Debt…fuckin’ hell.
May be leave them there so we can build using them there ?
Seeing as a single space shuttle flight with rather limited capacity costs about 1.5bn $ I doubt that this will be feasible at all.
And the prices of precious metals will come down once the scarcity is cut, right? The rich people won’t horde it…. Right??
Meanwhile , the earth is literally burning. Food and water will be higher priorities than minerals.
The Moon is already a treasure, but I get it, according to Capitalism things dont have value if they cant be monetized
Something something Amazon Rainforest
The study & the values quoted are based on a fallacy, quote:
>So should investors brace for a collapse in the price of platinum?
>“Prices could fall if, say, 100 tonnes of PGMs are brought back from the moon in one go,” Vyasanakere said. “But this is very unlikely. The best-case scenario — at least in the early days of lunar mining — is that someone might be able to bring back a few tonnes per year, which shouldn’t affect prices much.”
>
The fallacy that the best use & value is obtained mining for rare elements & transporting them earthside. In fact the best value is had by mining for the elements for continued spaceflight & take them to where they can be best utilized outside of Earth’s gravity well.
For example mining & refining to make oxygen, hydrogen, methane, iron, aluminium etc. Pays the best dividend when those materials are available to build & fuel spacecraft because lifting those elements from the earth to translunar space costs way more than from the moon.
Also the way to make this pay is for mining/refining operations to sell futures to the other spaceflight operations who will then at some future date utilize those stored assets.
This material should be used in space, not returned to earth. Build structures to generate electricity and filter sunlight to cool the planet at the same time. This is a huge opportunity.
Thorium.
The lunar regolith has a good amount of thorium, especially around Copernicus Crater.
Thorium fuel cycle reactors are coming online, and will be the next step in sustainable energy before nuclear fusion becomes the prime mover.
The operative word in the title is “scattered” – as in, not concentrated these minerals where they would be easy to mine.
As an example of how disingenuous this article is, let’s look closer to home – in our oceans. There is an estimated 20 million tons of gold in the oceans (one ton being worth $100 million). However, it has never been mined, because it is not financially feasible to do so. Mining on the moon will be orders of magnitude more difficult.
Noooo don’t mine the moon..you can’t trust people if the moon goes off course even slightly that’s it game over…
Why not precious metals that can do better for all of humanity? Why the price?
Can’t wait to see the vast amount of consequences that this might bring.
Awesome, let’s exploit it like we do everything else 😀
I’m not a scientist but wouldn’t it be a terrible idea to decrease the weight and mass of an object whose gravity is partially responsible for the unique conditions we need to sustain life?
Or am I dumb?
so what, only 20-50 years before we can do anything with it… weee
Ships to earth – too smal for raw materials. SO we need to refine IN space/on moon – so figure that out then sure we might be able to do that.
Your still talking 1-3 generations away at best.
Please don’t mine the moon… I’ve seen this movie.
Morlocks…
So they want to collect the scattered iron/nickel asteroid fragments (i.e. SOLID METAL) and remove platinum group metals that are in concentrations of 10 to 100 parts per million? In solid metal? On the moon?
Even if it’s really easy to just cruise around pick up iron nickel meteorite chunks everywhere, the amount of effort required to separate out the PGM and other desirable materials is gonna be problematic, to say the least.
Are they looking for investors? Cause this sounds like a grift.
Sounds similar to couple decades ago as deep sea mining of nodules was supposed to be mining industry’s next big thing. Haven’t heard about it since.