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The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be somethi

by pookha 2y ago

The moon has trillions of dollars in water, helium, and metals (rare earth, titanium, etc). It's an f'ing goldmine and controlling said resource will be something hostile authoritarian regimes (China) would seek out. There's simply no excuse that the US should be this bad at making a system to reach the moon. The Chinese have committed insane sins and dropped massive amounts of space hardware on the earth (luckily it landed in the ocean). We should be dunking on them but instead we've got this buffoonery?

bryanlarsen 2y ago
None of the material on the moon is worth more than the cost of shipping it back to Earth.
jandrese 2y ago
This sounds completely insane to me. Are people worried that China is going to mine out the moon before the US gets there? You're talking about trillions of tons of material, it won't be the limiting factor in your lifetime. And this assumes that lunar mining/refining is even practical.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  Same, but if that kind of paranoia gets us back into space I don't mind it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NikolaNovak 2y ago
I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everything else from metals to obscurely valuable versions of Helium, seems to fall apart as soon as we go from "Look! Up there in the sky! Minerals!!!1", to "let's do a back-of-the-napkin math along any of the materials, science, energy, or money axis" I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?
- jandrese 2y ago
  The only way mining and refining on the moon makes any sense is if you're building stuff to be used on the moon in your lunar colonies, and that's a long way off.
- SCM-Enthusiast 2y ago
  you should read the book delta v. The only time lunar mining makes sense is when there is a cislunar orbit economy. The delta v required to put things in orbit from the moon is a fraction of that of earth. So, if you have a vibrant manufacturing enviroment in space (Semi conductors, and other deposition methods) which space is more suited for, then the moon becomes a better place to source your materials from.
  - usrbinbash 2y ago
    > So, if you have a vibrant manufacturing enviroment in space And how does this "vibrant manufacturing environment" get into space? How is it supplied with personnel, food, water, spare parts, etc.? Let's just focus on one component, shall we? The Moon only has 1/6th of Earths gravity, but to get stuff away from the Moon still requires a launch. That launch requires fuel. There is no fuel source on the Moon, so even if we had production facilities there, there are no high energy raw materials for them to process. So where does the fuel come from? How about the only place in the solar system we know where we can make rocket fuel: EARTH! So every liter of rocket fuel used to power launches to supply raw materials to a "cislunar orbit economy", first has to be transported to the moon by launching it from Earths gravity well. So, where is the gain in efficiency exactly? Also, where would this "cislunar orbit economy" find a market? The vast majority of people are here, on Earth. So even if there was a way to supply such an economy with raw materials (and energy, and personnel, and so on), the products would still need to be transported to Earth, adding a huge additional cost to everything manufactured. How is this supposed to compete with products made on earth exactly?
    - SCM-Enthusiast 2y ago
      >fuel Hydrogen and oxygen can be made from water, and methane can be made from regolith and water. >where would this "cislunar orbit economy" find a market? The uniform distribution of microgravity lends itself to advanced manufacturing methods that cost hundreds if not billions of dollars to replicate here on earth. soooo many of earths manufacturing methods use very expensive means of creating the vacuum that is required, that is provided free in space. Semiconductors. Turns out here on earth the machines costs hundreds of millions of dollars to etch a wafer because of the use of various technologies to create vacums, control for foreign material, and ensure the micro etches "Stay" and the material "goes". There is a wide discussion, and multiple tests conducted on the ISS that has confirmed this. So, space may be the only way to build next-gen semi conductor tech to get us below 2nm, and a much higher yield, with much cheaper equipment. With the cost of a launch at ~100m on a falcon, the launch would be cheaper than the equipment they are sending up. ZBLAN fiber optics, growing protein crystals, Electron Beam Physical Vapor Deposition, Regolith refining, are all done better in space. And they will be cheaper in space, and on the moon and mars. They will be more expensive on earth due to the large gravity well.

by pookha 2y ago

bryanlarsen 2y ago

None of the material on the moon is worth more than the cost of shipping it back to Earth.

jandrese 2y ago

This sounds completely insane to me. Are people worried that China is going to mine out the moon before the US gets there? You're talking about trillions of tons of material, it won't be the limiting factor in your lifetime. And this assumes that lunar mining/refining is even practical.

RobotToaster 2y ago
Same, but if that kind of paranoia gets us back into space I don't mind it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NikolaNovak 2y ago

I have never found any math that made trip to the moon for materials even remotely wortwhile, by like orders of magnitude, not just today with today's technology, but for any foreseeable future we can meaningfully discuss. Water in particular is an unfortunate one to start with, given its abundance and ease of extraction on earth, vs absolutely positively ridiculous efforts to obtain them from the moon. But everything else from metals to obscurely valuable versions of Helium, seems to fall apart as soon as we go from "Look! Up there in the sky! Minerals!!!1", to "let's do a back-of-the-napkin math along any of the materials, science, energy, or money axis" I enjoy using traditional cold-war bogey-men to scare ignorant politicians into accidentally sponsoring real science as much as any other person, I do, but... as long as we're not actually buying into that sillyness, right?.... right?

jandrese 2y ago
The only way mining and refining on the moon makes any sense is if you're building stuff to be used on the moon in your lunar colonies, and that's a long way off.
SCM-Enthusiast 2y ago
you should read the book delta v. The only time lunar mining makes sense is when there is a cislunar orbit economy. The delta v required to put things in orbit from the moon is a fraction of that of earth. So, if you have a vibrant manufacturing enviroment in space (Semi conductors, and other deposition methods) which space is more suited for, then the moon becomes a better place to source your materials from.
- usrbinbash 2y ago
  > So, if you have a vibrant manufacturing enviroment in space And how does this "vibrant manufacturing environment" get into space? How is it supplied with personnel, food, water, spare parts, etc.? Let's just focus on one component, shall we? The Moon only has 1/6th of Earths gravity, but to get stuff away from the Moon still requires a launch. That launch requires fuel. There is no fuel source on the Moon, so even if we had production facilities there, there are no high energy raw materials for them to process. So where does the fuel come from? How about the only place in the solar system we know where we can make rocket fuel: EARTH! So every liter of rocket fuel used to power launches to supply raw materials to a "cislunar orbit economy", first has to be transported to the moon by launching it from Earths gravity well. So, where is the gain in efficiency exactly? Also, where would this "cislunar orbit economy" find a market? The vast majority of people are here, on Earth. So even if there was a way to supply such an economy with raw materials (and energy, and personnel, and so on), the products would still need to be transported to Earth, adding a huge additional cost to everything manufactured. How is this supposed to compete with products made on earth exactly?
  - SCM-Enthusiast 2y ago
    >fuel Hydrogen and oxygen can be made from water, and methane can be made from regolith and water. >where would this "cislunar orbit economy" find a market? The uniform distribution of microgravity lends itself to advanced manufacturing methods that cost hundreds if not billions of dollars to replicate here on earth. soooo many of earths manufacturing methods use very expensive means of creating the vacuum that is required, that is provided free in space. Semiconductors. Turns out here on earth the machines costs hundreds of millions of dollars to etch a wafer because of the use of various technologies to create vacums, control for foreign material, and ensure the micro etches "Stay" and the material "goes". There is a wide discussion, and multiple tests conducted on the ISS that has confirmed this. So, space may be the only way to build next-gen semi conductor tech to get us below 2nm, and a much higher yield, with much cheaper equipment. With the cost of a launch at ~100m on a falcon, the launch would be cheaper than the equipment they are sending up. ZBLAN fiber optics, growing protein crystals, Electron Beam Physical Vapor Deposition, Regolith refining, are all done better in space. And they will be cheaper in space, and on the moon and mars. They will be more expensive on earth due to the large gravity well.