Mining the moon for minerals could be worth billions, but astronomers warn it’s bad news for science
https://www.businessinsider.com/mining-moon-minerals-lucrative-bad-news-science-research-astronomists-2025-2?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-space-sub-post
19 Comments
**TLDR:**
* **Moon mining could become a multibillion-dollar industry.**
* **The moon holds resources like rare earth elements, water ice, and helium-3.**
* **But astronomists say large-scale lunar mining could be bad news for scientific research.**
[https://youtu.be/AhTadcV0myo?feature=shared&t=60](https://youtu.be/AhTadcV0myo?feature=shared&t=60)
I’m an economic geologist.
People like to say ocean floor mining is a decade away, moon mining is a couple decades away and asteroid mining is not far behind.
Those people are wrong. It’s more like hundreds of years away or will just never happen. There are perfectly good ore deposits just sitting right near the surface of the Earth that we know about but don’t mine because the economics don’t make sense.
This is all just made up stuff for clicks. It’s fun to do research to find that these kinds of commodities exist on the moon, but when a scientist calculates their “value”, they’re conveniently leaving out the part that this is the value if it were processed and sitting in a warehouse in Canada. Everything on the moon has negative value if you consider the cost to get it.
The economics of moon mining won’t even begin to make sense until we have a large population of people living on the moon or at least some kind of manufacturing station on the moon for some imaginary space colony, and I just don’t see why we would ever want to do that. Water on the moon, or hydrogen on the moon are meaningless unless we’re building things there for our hypothetical mars colonization or whatever, and that’s just not happening.
We can’t even figure out how to keep our own planet habitable. You think we’re going to make the moon habitable before we do that? Or Mars? Or Space itself? Not a chance.
And it’s just plain stupid. But then look at the people who advocate for mining the moon. May they all succumb to their own stupidity.
Trash article.
The surface of the moon is 38 million km^(2), which is about the same as North and South America combined. There is plenty of space for all kinds of activities for the foreseeable future.
By the time industrialization of the moon reaches the kinds of levels where we’re mining for helium-3 or other things discussed in the article, our overall space travel capabilities will be a major boon for scientific research, not a hindrance.
Didn’t they watch the time machine moveis with the weird humans at the future????
Unless there’s an elite quick way to travel to the moon and get the minerals this is really wild to do why go through all the hassle to get minerals from the moon if the elite way of traveling to the moon hasn’t been invented yet
It’s ALSO a huge legal mess and anyone who goes around talking about how we can just go up to the moon and start mining is ignoring decades of treaties and agreements that will be a problem for anyone who would like to start mining.
One thing a lot of space colony/exploitation advocates just never talk about is the legal situation, many seem to think that they can just ignore it and it’ll vanish but that’s not actually how laws and treaties work. Ignoring it could well start a war.
In addition to what others have posted about this, there’s the fact that practically every space resources expert has gone on record to say that asteroid and moon mining materials for a return to earth use case is extremely cost prohibitive and not economically feasible. The only cases where mining the moon or asteroids economically makes sense is for use in-situ in space, or return of small samples such as helium 3 for research purposes
You know, we should make it into a Russian communist prison. With a head Warden.
It’s bad news for humanity. The moon belongs to everyone and shouldn’t be privatized out to the highest bidder to be destroyed and polluted.
We’re going to end up blowing the moon up, aren’t we?
Mine an asteroid for trillions and leave the moon alone? Is that an option?
What about the whalers who live there? This might disrupt their activities.
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|[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1iyqsrh/stub/mexcy4h “Last usage”)|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)|
|[L1](/r/Space/comments/1iyqsrh/stub/mexbpao “Last usage”)|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 1 of a two-body system, between the bodies|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1iyqsrh/stub/mexcy4h “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
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Mining the moon, asteroids, other planets…all are childish fantasies with zero economic value. We’d literally have to run out of the minerals on earth before it makes any kind of sense at all (except for using them ON the moon, etc)
Even if there were a mountain of pure gold on the moon waiting to be picked up, it would still be more economical to mine it here on earth.
It would cost billions just to get these minerals back to earth, it’s just not economically feasible.
The moon miners will eventually rebel with the aid of a sentient supercomputer with gender identity issues.
Oh, well if it’s bad for science I’m sure those who stand to profit will forgo it for humanity’s sake. /s