5 ms·
mining rights
by bozhark 3y ago
mining rights
- chmod775 3y agoThere is no international treaty giving you mining rights for landing on the moon.
- simplicio 3y agoRather the opposite. Current international law forbids countries from claiming property rights on the Moon.
- goku12 3y agoWhat do you mine on the Moon? Moon's gravity may be 1/6th that of Earth's - but that is still a lot to overcome to bring back anything substantial. I keep hearing about Helium3 fusion. But we don't have any commercially viable fusion reactors around. There may be water - but it's likely going to take a lot of processing to extract. What else is there that we can't get on this planet and is worth the cost of lifting from the Moon?
- neom 3y agohttps://www.popsci.com/elements-mine-on-the-moon/ https://www.popsci.com/elements-mine-on-the-moon/
- goku12 3y agoThis article doesn't address the nuances - the energy requirements, processing of the ore, etc.
- thombat 3y agoSo nothing of immediate or direct use here on earth, just things that may be usable for further off-world construction or (in the case of He-3) might be an energy source someday.
- hnben 3y agoisn't metal in orbit much more valuable than metal on earth? i.e. you can build plenty cheap satellites with it.
- hnbad 3y agoThis assumes you can refine the ores "in orbit" and manufacture everything "in orbit". This in turn requires a ton of manufacturing on Earth and a lot of launches to move all this stuff off Earth. Not to mention all the supporting industry and infrastructure manufacturing normally has on Earth. Not to mention the R&D costs and staff logistics. This isn't a video game. You can't just click a button and have an autonomous satellite factory churning out satellites in space. Moving any amount of manufacturing or refining into space is a massive logistics undertaking we haven't even begun to explore. Just because Bezos has a vision of moving the working class off Earth or Musk made some off-the-cuff remarks to rile up his yes-men, that doesn't mean this is something that will happen soon, much less something that will be useful soon.