Humans will soon be able to mine on the moon—but should we? Four questions to consider
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-humans-moon.html#google_vignette
Humans will soon be able to mine on the moon—but should we? Four questions to consider
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-humans-moon.html#google_vignette
26 Comments
From the article
>NASA’s multibillion-dollar [Artemis program](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/artemis_plan-20200921.pdf) isn’t just about sending astronauts back to the moon. It’s about paving the way for mining operations.
>[China](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-17/china-us-are-in-a-space-race-to-make-billions-from-mining-the-moon-s-minerals?embedded-checkout=true) is also on a similar trajectory.
>All of this has set in motion a new lunar race with private companies competing to figure out how to extract the moon’s resources, potentially [selling it back to governments](https://www.newscientist.com/article/0-how-should-we-regulate-the-firms-planning-to-mine-and-sell-moon-rocks/) in a cosmic supply chain.
It’s funny how the TV show “For All Mankind” laid this out as a possible timeline / possibility in their alternate history if Russia had won the space race which triggered both countries to continually invest into space exploration and it’s now happening
If it stops them from destroying earth? Yes.
But that premise is unfortunately false.
Always makes me think of The Time Machine movie where we shatter the moon trying to build underground condominiums and basically fuck all of humanity.
What about “How much do we mine?” Do we expect corporations to restrict themselves? At what point does the moon lose the mass required to pull the tide? At what point does its mass mean it will crash into earth or spin off into space? We lol at the short term benefits but what happens in 100 years when it’s still going on?
Why not, I would love some moon cheese. It is made of cheese right?
I feel fairly certain that taxpayers will subsidize corporate adventures to exploit the Moon, which will probably not pay off, but if they do, will only reap dividends for a few oligarchs. I see no reason to expect that lunar exploitation will broadly benefit mankind.
I would honestly prefer that we not ruin another celestial body
The earth is billions of years old. Humans are just hundreds of thousands old and yet..we have managed to foul our nest thoroughly in a geological blink of an eye. How long til we do the same to the moon?
Man, reading all these comments made me realize that pop culture and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race.
”soon” aka journalist speak for “sometime in the next few decades” …
“After the Moon fell from the sky, the Earth could no longer sustain the species.”
The Time Machine
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and their descendants will be trillionaires in the foreseeable future if they pioneer mining the Moon.
This has become a wonderful example for me of a distinction between environmentalists and conservationists. I’ve met several people saying humans shouldn’t “spoil” the moon. Spoil for whom? No one lives there! It’s like nature is a virtue in-and-of itself to them.
I support protecting our rivers, because I want *people* to be able to enjoy the rivers. I oppose deforestation because I want *people* to be able to enjoy the forests. Call it my anthropocentric bias, but unless we mine so much that it affects the tides on Earth, I really don’t care what we do to the moon’s “environment”.
People think the war over that will be fought there. Some battles will ofc, but the real bloodshed will happen on ol’ terra firma.
Unless there is some newly discovered unobtainium there, no material could possibly be worth the cost of freight.
I would limit mining of the moon to just for research purposes so that we can then go to asteroids to do it at scale. Leave the moon as pristine as possible for future habitation.
Soon? Maybe we’ll be able to establish the infrastructure to actually send resources back to Earth, and actually show a profit, in a few decades.
From a financial standpoint, there’s only really 2 reasons to mine the moon, IMO:
1. If what you’re mining is rare and it’s cost efficient to pay the massive transportation costs (maybe with certain rare metals, but not likely currently).
2. You’re going to use the materials to fabricate something in space or on the moon. In that case, the cost to offset transportation is much lower.
The best thing to mine from a profit perspective is very likely water to make rocket fuel, so craft can be refueled. Assuming you find a sufficient ice deposit.
There’s a lot of infrastructure and exploration that will need to happen before any of this is remotely plausible.
I feel like there’s no way that’s going to be profitable with the amount of energy and materials it’s going to take to get to the moon and back again. Not to mention the infrastructure that’ll need to be built on the moon to facilitate that.
It doesn’t matter if we should or shouldn’t do it. If there’s profit to be made “we” are 100% gonna do it. I mean we are destroying the planet we are living on for money so why should we care about a moon.
Honest question: what the heck do they intend to mine? There’s not even clear consensus that any of the water that’s ever been detected is present in concentrations that could actually be extracted. Helium 3 and pretty much all the similar stuff in the regolith that sci fi tropes eat up is even worse from a practical standpoint. What is the actual angle?
I’m at the point where I think humanity should focus on equality. Currently, anything capitalist is going to result in a larger divide between the wealthy and the poor. We need to redo our system before we go after big things like moon mining.
What minerals or resources are there to be mined on/from the moon? Doesn’t seem too worth while considering the numerous hurdles to even get there.
It’s doesn’t matter if we should, we will do it anyway.
Bro your radio display still works?! I have to keep pressing the little plastic over the display to get it to come back