Nasa is looking for private companies to help mine the moon

[sl8]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/11/nasa-moon-mining-private-companies

Nasa is looking for private companies to help mine the moon

The agency announced it is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider as part of a technology development program

Edward Helmore
Fri 11 Sep 2020 02.00 EDT

[SheltieLover]

1. Wtaf?

Leave the moon alone!

[Claustrum]

3. How else is he going to funnel money to his donor buddies or his own son-in-law?

[SheltieLover]

4. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

I hope Joe does not allow this!

[Silent3]

10. I don't trust anything if Trump is behind, but in and of itself, what's wrong...

...with mining the moon?

It doesn't have an ecosystem that can be disturbed. It's a dead rock in space. As long as no one is using the moon as a giant billboard in space, fouling up the beauty of the night sky, what does it matter?

[SheltieLover]

11. I hope you aren't serious

[Silent3]

12. I'm completely serious

And why wouldn't I be?

I hope your comeback isn't something like "Haven't we messed up the earth enough without messing up the moon too?", because if it is, you're just reacting emotionally without thinking about the real issues.

[LunaSea]

18. These companies have been working toward such goals

for decades. While the Spanky admin has focused NASA away from Mars and back toward the moon, I know of no connections
with Spanky and his pals having worked on lunar projects with a couple of the entities listed.

The most valuable stuff on the moon is the water ice at the poles. If we can learn to extract water, oxygen and fuel from the lunar environment we have a good chance of opening up the resources of the entire inner system.

[doc03]

5. Mountain top removal on the moon no doubt nt

[tavernier]

6. Well that will put Wisconsin cheese farmers out of business!!

Vote Biden!!!

[Tanuki]

7. They will probably fill up the extraction holes with plastic waste now that

developing countries are cracking down on being used as first world dumping grounds.

[Backseat Driver]

9. but, but, but...nuclear waste could maybe somehow re-charge itself

in a few million/zillion light years if left on the surface?

[Backseat Driver]

8. WTF? Are there no failed AI robots available for the mining tasks?

Hey, here's an idea - land a certain few "lunatics" there and collect the "cowpiles" from the #2 process.. In 4+ years, we'd have enough sustainable energy to fuel EVERYTHING we've ever needed.

Moo with me! Oops, that would involve methane gas escaping from the ruminating comunication process

HELP - Houston, we (meaning, you) have a problem!

[Baclava]

13. maybe for water ice, the moon is just rock! The asteroids are where the gold is!

Asteroid mining! Fuck yeah!


Gigantic golden asteroid could make everyone on Earth a billionaire

The asteroid – known as 16 Psyche – has a mass of less than 1% of our moon and it contains heaps of platinum, iron and nickel alongside the gold. The combined total value of all those precious metals would equal out at something like $700 quintillion.



https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/27/gigantic-golden-asteroid-make-everyone-earth-billionaire-10075724/#:~:text=An%20asteroid%20that's%20filled%20with,and%20nickel%20alongside%20the%20gold.

[LunaSea]

14. Why would you think these asteroids

aren't lying around in bits on the moon already?

[Baclava]

17. Strip mining the moons for bits and pieces when you can get a solid metal body just floating around?

Yeah, asteroid mining is the future, send in the drilling prospecting robots!

And we can use the asteroids as spaceships, hollow out a habitat, strap a nuclear rocket to it and blast off to the stars!

I have big plans.

[LunaSea]

22. No need for strip mining.

It's on the surface. Just hunt them in infrared just after sunset.

Nuclear steam rockets would be very effective assuming you are allowed to lift one from the earths surface.
But they will never be fast enough for interstellar travel.

[Baclava]

23. I was thinking nuclear pulse rockets, exploding small nukes for propulsion

Nuclear-pulse drive launch vehicle seriously developed by General Atomics in the United States from 1955-1965. The design allowed vast payloads of hundreds of tons to be hurled to the planets. By 1958 the Orion team saw themselves in direct competition with Von Braun's chemical rockets. They hoped to a land a huge manned expedition on Mars by 1964 and tour the moons of Saturn by 1970. However politically NASA would not argue for the exception to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty necessary to allow firing of nuclear explosions in space.



only instead of a rocket, a small asteroid as vehicle

[LunaSea]

24. Popular idea

Ain't gonna happen.
You remember how difficult it is to launch an RTG with a few specks of plutonium onboard?
Nobody would agree to launching 100s of nuclear weapons to orbit.
NERVA style steam is better, and the icy moons and comets have all the fuel you need.

[Silent3]

16. Well, you'd just devalue gold a lot :)

Once it's not that rare, the value would plummet.

But it would still be a great thing, since gold is a very useful material.

Actually, the Earth has so much gold that if you brought it all to the surface, we'd be knee-deep in gold. The problem is that it's totally impractical to get at nearly all of it. As difficult and expensive as it is right now to get to an asteroid, that's a breeze compared to extracting anything for deep within the Earth.

[Baclava]

19. That's OK, just give me a thousand tons of gold and I'll pave my driveway with it, just for giggles

[cbdo2007]

15. We are many decades away from this being a profitable venture for them.

[Retrograde]

20. I suspect the infrastructure

will be paid for by us - the research, the rockets, the landers, the rovers, the return trips - the taxpayers will foot the bill and GOP donors will pocket the profits. It's always easier to make money if someone else finances all the risk.

[cbdo2007]

25. That is probably true...but still I would guess 30 years before we are realistically seeing a mining

operation on the Moon.

I do support the idea and it sounds super cool as an astronomer, to see buildings up there...wow, it just seems like we are a significantly long way off.

[dalton99a]

26. That should be a top national priority

Mine Mars too