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What's currently worth mining on the moon and sending back to earth? Most resources are great for building more things on the moon, but valuable enough to send

by phire 5y ago

What's currently worth mining on the moon and sending back to earth? Most resources are great for building more things on the moon, but valuable enough to send back. Helium-3 is the obvious one, but that is also betting on fusion reactors becoming viable in the near future. Some "rare earth" minerals might also be economically viable.

mr_toad 5y ago
Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen, possibly aluminium. Not to send back to Earth, but into Earth orbit to use as consumables and fuel. And these bulk materials aren’t going to be bothered by G forces.
- phire 5y ago
  Ah yes. I forgot that you might want consumables in earth's orbit itself. Silicon could be useful in orbit for building solar panels.
adastra22 5y ago
Rare, but industrially useful metals (cobalt, lithium, etc.) should be present in localized concentrations of high-grade ore on the lunar surface, along with platinum-group metals. We didn't use to think so, but our understanding of regolith and impact dynamics has come pretty far in the last few years and we now expect that a lot of the small impact craters on the moon asteroid cores that survived and are either dispersed in the crater floor, or for metallic impactors buried a few 10's of meters underground. So basically everything you would go to the asteroid belt to get, you can find on the lunar surface, far more accessible to humans in the decades to come. But beyond that, the moon will no doubt export large amounts of volatiles from the permanently shadowed craters in the poles, and structural building materials for construction in Earth orbit or elsewhere in cis-lunar space, or the fueling of expeditions to the rest of the solar system. You'd just have to tilt the spin launcher to a different angle and adjust the throw velocity to send payloads on other trajectories through cis-lunar space.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  The economics of all of this totally collapses when you can launch 150 tons of whatever fully reusable to earth orbit. What's cheaper, mining infrastructure on moon, with a launch system on the moon to transport it back to Earth? Considering you need potentially 100 launches from the moon to match one Starship launch. And the capital cost for the moonining and launch is absurdly high. And the only way we will ever even be able to build such a system will require a Starship type vehicle anyway.
  - adastra22 5y ago
    That doesn’t affect the economics (and environmental impact) of mining the moon vs the earth for industrially useful metals. The actual cost for Starship is unlikely to be the crazy low numbers space nerds like us are hoping for. No space launch system (including Falcon) has ever reached its theoretical minimum cost. It will be transformative, but not too cheap to meter.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      By that logic building a mining base on the moon would also be far more expensive. You see how this makes no sense? We will never build an industrial base on the moon unless we have a full reusable launch system and if we have such a system mining things on earth is just far, far, far, far, far, far cheaper. The only reason you would mine on the moon is to build things ON THE MOON.
      - adastra22 5y ago
        It's quite possible that the expense can be made comparable. Many resources available in the solar system exist in non-oxidized forms that just aren't available on Earth. Mining already reduced, pure metal nuggets is a huge reduction in energy costs and eliminates the need for refining steps with hugely toxic side products. Also have you seen how we mine many resources on Earth? Going to the moon (or near-Earth asteroids) and sifting out nuggets a few meters under the powdery surface regolith is way easier to do than drilling 2 miles underground for increasingly harder to find deposits. The actual energetic cost of going from the moon to an Earth-capture orbit is only about 1 kwh/kg. Or about $150 per metric ton. Obviously real costs will be higher than physical limits, but you still might want to check your intuitions about just how costly mining the Moon really could be. Ultimately we need to move our heavy industry off-earth to save our planet's biosphere. In a hundred years when there is a vibrant interplanetary economy, its possible we could eliminate toxic heavy industry on Earth entirely.

by phire 5y ago

mr_toad 5y ago

Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen, possibly aluminium. Not to send back to Earth, but into Earth orbit to use as consumables and fuel. And these bulk materials aren’t going to be bothered by G forces.

phire 5y ago
Ah yes. I forgot that you might want consumables in earth's orbit itself. Silicon could be useful in orbit for building solar panels.

adastra22 5y ago

Rare, but industrially useful metals (cobalt, lithium, etc.) should be present in localized concentrations of high-grade ore on the lunar surface, along with platinum-group metals. We didn't use to think so, but our understanding of regolith and impact dynamics has come pretty far in the last few years and we now expect that a lot of the small impact craters on the moon asteroid cores that survived and are either dispersed in the crater floor, or for metallic impactors buried a few 10's of meters underground. So basically everything you would go to the asteroid belt to get, you can find on the lunar surface, far more accessible to humans in the decades to come. But beyond that, the moon will no doubt export large amounts of volatiles from the permanently shadowed craters in the poles, and structural building materials for construction in Earth orbit or elsewhere in cis-lunar space, or the fueling of expeditions to the rest of the solar system. You'd just have to tilt the spin launcher to a different angle and adjust the throw velocity to send payloads on other trajectories through cis-lunar space.

panick21_ 5y ago
The economics of all of this totally collapses when you can launch 150 tons of whatever fully reusable to earth orbit. What's cheaper, mining infrastructure on moon, with a launch system on the moon to transport it back to Earth? Considering you need potentially 100 launches from the moon to match one Starship launch. And the capital cost for the moonining and launch is absurdly high. And the only way we will ever even be able to build such a system will require a Starship type vehicle anyway.
- adastra22 5y ago
  That doesn’t affect the economics (and environmental impact) of mining the moon vs the earth for industrially useful metals. The actual cost for Starship is unlikely to be the crazy low numbers space nerds like us are hoping for. No space launch system (including Falcon) has ever reached its theoretical minimum cost. It will be transformative, but not too cheap to meter.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    By that logic building a mining base on the moon would also be far more expensive. You see how this makes no sense? We will never build an industrial base on the moon unless we have a full reusable launch system and if we have such a system mining things on earth is just far, far, far, far, far, far cheaper. The only reason you would mine on the moon is to build things ON THE MOON.
    - adastra22 5y ago
      It's quite possible that the expense can be made comparable. Many resources available in the solar system exist in non-oxidized forms that just aren't available on Earth. Mining already reduced, pure metal nuggets is a huge reduction in energy costs and eliminates the need for refining steps with hugely toxic side products. Also have you seen how we mine many resources on Earth? Going to the moon (or near-Earth asteroids) and sifting out nuggets a few meters under the powdery surface regolith is way easier to do than drilling 2 miles underground for increasingly harder to find deposits. The actual energetic cost of going from the moon to an Earth-capture orbit is only about 1 kwh/kg. Or about $150 per metric ton. Obviously real costs will be higher than physical limits, but you still might want to check your intuitions about just how costly mining the Moon really could be. Ultimately we need to move our heavy industry off-earth to save our planet's biosphere. In a hundred years when there is a vibrant interplanetary economy, its possible we could eliminate toxic heavy industry on Earth entirely.