Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 236 points – Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy
space.com

Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy::A number of entrepreneurial groups have shared their strategies to turn the moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.

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We should declare the moon like a national park (global park) and preserve it as is.

Why? I would rather have preservation on earth, than on the moon.

You are kidding right? The moon is essential for life on Earth.

Not sure building a moon base to launch spaceships from is going to be the end of the world

Building a (single) moon base is no the same as focusing on mining the shit out of it.

As long as the mass stays broadly the same, I don't see the issue?

There should be some rules put in place prior to moon mining. America's national parks allow some oil drilling but there are rules and public input that is allowed.

That's to protect fauna and flora, zero of which exist on the moon.

I'd be happy to see lights from moonbased operations from earth

The moon is essential for life on Earth.

Yes, but mostly by it's mass, and maybe by it's albedo. Is there anything else about the moon of relevance for life on Earth?

It's mass of 7 * 10^22^ kg is so enormous, it wouldn't make a dent if we add or remove hundreds of gigatons, which is far beyond our lifting capabilities at least for the next decades.

It's surface is so huge, we cannot affect it's albedo significantly.

So even if we approached the moon as a mere profit to be exploited, maximizing output and disregarding any concerns, how could this be detrimental to life on Earth?

The moon will be fine and the earth will be fine.

But for me the idea of some private company extracting massive amounts of profit from something like the moon just sounds wrong.

We all know they’re not going up there for the good of humanity or whatever. They want to turn their billions into trillions.

Personally I think they need to give up their wealth on earth first, and then we can think about how best to extract resources from the moon so that it will be beneficial to humans rather than a few bank accounts. We couldn’t do it with oil, but maybe we can with rare moon material? One can only dream.

I know I know pie in the sky right?

We all know they’re not going up there for the good of humanity or whatever. They want to turn their billions into trillions.

Yes, and necessarily figure out and establish lunar industrialization in the process. Depending on viewpoint, this can be a big argument in favor of the good of humanity.

I agree we need to fix our economic incentives and inequalities.

Though I don't see how the Moon of all things should be spared from capitalist exploitation. It's probably the one place where they can't do much harm, no matter how hard they capitalist.

Theses worries are fully justified when it comes to rain forests, deep sea mining, child slavery, union busting and pretty much anything they touch on Earth. But on the Moon?

There is one interesting worst case scenario: A corporate monopoly exploits the Moon so ruthlessly, that it outcompetes terrestial production. Let's say certain building materials or other things of value are suddenly much cheaper to import from the Moon than they are to make on Earth. Wouldn't that end exploitation of people and animals in these industries on Earth, preserve ecosystems which would have been destroyed otherwise?

If we can replace the kind of mining that destroys the environment here on Earth with mining outside of Earth (not just the Moon, but maybe even more importantly asteroids on the Asteroid Belt) how is that a bad thing?

Even having Moon mining in addition to Earth-based mining will probably reduce the impact of the latter, if only by pushing down the prices of certain ores, making some Earth-based mining operations for those unprofitable and forcing them to close down (or never start in the first place) which will be good for people and good for Nature.

Or do you think the people doing the mining here on Earth (and more often than not leaving behind massive ecological damage) aren't "extracting massive amounts of profit" for doing it right here were they do a lot more damage?!

You really need to look at it in aggregate, not just consider only the first level effects and hence "more mining anywhere" = "bad" - "more mining way out there were it can't possibly harm people or Nature" is close to the best thing that could happen to our resource-intensive Economy (the best would be the end of Consumerism, but there are way more powerful moneyed interests align against it that against Moon mining).

That's how you know people crying for the environment aren't honest about it. Because when presented with a viable alternative, they flip out with TECHNOLOGY BAD

That’s how you know people crying for the environment aren’t honest about it. Because when presented with a viable alternative, they flip out with TECHNOLOGY BAD

Maybe some, certainly not all. I'm deeply worried about the state of our environment. I'm even an activist, but welcome space industry, because it can reduce pressure down here. Also because TECHNOLOGY GOOD.

There's even a whole solar punk instance on lemmy. Not exactly my breed, just pointing out reality is and people are more diverse.

It’s also a desolate wasteland we might as well extract the resources from to jump off to better locations in the solar system.

The presence of all that material up there is essential to life on Earth (via the tides).

Its surface features are not: in fact you would need massive megastructures for people down here to even notice any change to those features.

Absolutelly, lets not remove the Moon when we get to the point of being capable of doing so, but that's an entirelly different level of preservation than making the whole thing be preserved according to the same rules as national parks.

I assume you’re referring to the tidal forces that the moon provides. If so: We could strip-mine the dark side of the moon (to prevent any aesthetic impact to earthers) for millennia and barely even scratch the surface (hah) of the total mass of Luna. We’re not going to throw a world-eater at it.

I don't know why they are downvoting you. The only explanation would be the sheer lack of knowledge on how much larger and massive the moon is compared to everything humanity has mined and could mine for millions of years

I think my account is getting targeted by some bots. A lot of my comments lately are, a while after I post them, get an identical number of downvotes to upvotes, but all at once. I’m gonna investigate it a bit more thoroughly this weekend when I have some free time. I’ve seen posts indicating a nontrivial amount of other users may be experiencing similar things too, so this might be a coordinated effort of some sort, though I have no idea what the goal might be other than to just try to irritate people and push posts and comments down.

An airless desert impossible to reach for and with zero impact (even indirect) on the life of for 99.999% of people, with almost as much surface are as the whole of the Americas and which is entirelly devoid of life and always will be, is the last place you need to preserve.

Ew. This sounds like massive public investment in space for massive private profits in space.

Looks like we'll be at our Expanse style dystopia sooner than expected!

Well, if anything is going to get us there, and establish a permanent colony, it's corporate interests.

Can't wait for the first McDonald's on the moon.

Given the way our political systems works, they'll probably be selling air to workers who are pretty much slaves.

I'll build my own fast food restaurant with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the restaurant!

It's like we have learnt nothing, "let's strip another celestial body of its minerals then fuck off onto the next when we have had our fill."

The difference is, there is no natural life to kill on the moon, and if it turns out to be possible, maybe even easier, to mine for necessary metals on the moon then Earth-side mining won't be necessary

Also, being able to get resources on the moon without having to ship them there from Earth will make it much easier and cheaper to launch spaceships to the rest of the solar system.

So I have two questions from that.

  1. How much mass can we remove from the moon until we affect it's rotation around earth?

  2. What will the ecological impact on earth be if a dozen companies start launching rockets at the moon on a regular basis?

Mining enough to alter the orbit of the moon would require a pretty ridiculous amount of time and effort. Much more than our global mining efforts combined and multiplied and on a timescale of thousands of years.

And we only have to launch a few rockets, enough to set up a self-sufficient base which can then produce more rockets and fuel from resources on site. Not to mention it's much easier, and even feasible with existing materials, to build a space elevator on the moon.

Would it not be super cool to have all those minerals until we have extracted that much from the moon that it's orbit becomes unstable and then spirals into earth?

First, figure out how much the Moon weighs. The find out how much we mine form the Earth each year.

Second, the impact of dozens of flights a day will be much less than the impact of mining the Earth

Pollute the moon all you want, better than earth.

I think the shipping costs between earth and moon are ridiculous. Moon manufacturing only makes sense for supplying moon bases and transportation to other planets.

From Earth to the moon for sure, but once it's established, from the moon to Earth isn't as tough.

Wasn't the Moon's gravity low enough that you could basically use electromagnetic cannons to launch payloads from the surface all the way out of lunar orbit?

In the absence of an athmosphere and with only 16.6% of Earth's gravity, achieving orbit from the Moon isn't simply "not as though" as doing so from Earth, it's incredibly less so (maybe 100s of times, though I don't really have the numbers so take it with a grain) - just compare the full size (including boosters) and fuel payload of the vehicle needed to put 3 people on the Moon and those of the vehicle needed to bring them back to Earth (granted, the first vehicle had to also carry the second one, plus food, water and air for the first part of the trip).

Being at the bottom of a 1G well and having to also overcome quite a lot of air drag to get out of it massivelly adds up to the energy needed to do so, both because the whole getting out of a gravity well thing is a logarithmic progression (as you need to spend fuel to haul up the fuel that's going to be used higher u), so overcoming 6x the gravity doesn't just mean using 6x the fuel, and on top of that there are the the losses due to drag in the lower athmosphere which for example severely limit initial launch speeds (as drag is directly proportional to velocity).

If you haven't read it yet, try 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,' by Robert Heinlein. It was written in the 1960s, so some of the tech is a teeny-weeny bit outdated but the story is still great.

I don't know anything about EM canons but between the moon having a relatively weak gravity well and being within Earth's gravity well, I'd think any method would be much easier to use when it comes to transport to Earth

Ok so I did a small bit of research and found optimistic estimates from groups promoting this of $800kg. You can’t just throw shit at earth, you have to put it down safely. In reality what makes sense is manufacturing stuff that you then don’t have to bring up to the moon, or to mars, or anywhere else off of earth. You build it on the moon instead.

IDK $800/kg sounds pretty great compared getting from Earth into Earth orbit at $54,000/kg. Doing something like manufacturing and launching satellites would probably become pretty viable once it's set up.

Ya less gravity to fight... I'm curious what the numbers look like though, it's gotta be much more expensive than bringing stuff over on a boat from China. What advantages would mining on the moon provide?

Independence from China

Why? If it is in fact cost efficient the Chinese will be there too and will do it better at lower cost.

No, they won’t necessarily do it better or cheaper. You know the primary reason China has such cheap terrestrial manufacturing is because they have an absolutely massive population, most of whom are a good bit lower on the socioeconomic scale than western consumers, and the country overall has generally poor human rights and worker protections, right? There are reasons Chinese manufacturing is inexpensive, and the reasons aren’t very nice.

Cheap labor was China’s foot in the door 30 years ago. Now they instead compete at the highest levels. It is very similar to how Japan and South Korea developed their modern economies.

Man I thought by 2023 I'd be taking my jetpack to my moon meetings not arguing over whether we should strip mine the damn place.

Honestly I think a solar farm on the moon would be much better investing in at some point. I remember reading an article where a nation was experimenting with beaming energy down from orbit or some shit

Do you want Morlocks? Because that's how you get Morlocks.

We must not allow capitalism to escape this planet

What does that mean practically, how can we pursue this goal?

Hasn't this mission already failed, with SpaceX and other private space companies already doing business in orbit and reaching beyond?

How is that functionally different from saying we should allow no economic activity in space?