Plans for a European base on the moon have taken a major step forward. The European Space Agency revealed it has signed up rocket maker ArianeGroup to develop plans for a moon base that could be used to mine material from the lunar surface. The project will 'examine the possibility of going to the Moon before 2025 and starting to work there' - and could trigger a new space race as countries rush to harness lunar resources.....snip~ Europe wants to mine the moon by 2025 How dare they.....they better ask us for permission first, Right?
No, the moon is not American territory. I wonder what the cost benefit ratio would be for a mining colony on the moon supplying orbital industry? Seems to me the costs of establishing such a venture would vastly outweigh the costs of transport to orbit of terrestrial materials. I do support the establishment of the first extraterrestrial human colony tho.
Glad to see so many believes in one thread. This all goes to help prove to these nut jobs the moon is real. Btw how do your plans to mine the moon work considering the moon is flat and only a few feet deep? I suppose the sensible solotion is to mine at an angle so you hit it side ways and mine it length ways. Is that your plan and what size drill will you be using? Btw enjoy your trip, im looking forward to going soon. But unfortunately my local airport does not fly to that destination yet but im hoping they do in the future.
Nah they will just say its all CGI and paid actors and that the green cheese they ship back is all just colored with food coloring.
I think they're going to have competition China Makes Historic 1st Landing on Mysterious Far Side of the Moon https://www.space.com/42883-china-first-landing-moon-far-side.html
Or they will claim the flag has been planted or....whatever. Once people pass a certain point they will simply invent things to 'prove' they are correct.
I wonder what the economics of Moon mining are? Seems extraordinarily expensive at this stage. You would want to be chasing something very valuable.
Apparently they want to mine regolith. It contains high amounts of oxygen (probably in the form of oxydized metals) and could be used as a source of fuel. I imagine processing it is incredibly inefficient, but possibly more efficient than transporting fuel from the earth into orbit. Its not valuable here on earth, but could be valuable for refueling in space, compared to how much fuel it takes to get fuel from earth into space. Its a potential stepping stone to mining more valuable space resources that are currently logistically unreachable.
Not in the very long-term, if production is scaled up. Yes, sure, if you're just talking about a space station or two, you'd be right. But theoretically if they want to start an economy in space, this is the way to go. The downside is the surface of the moon is almost entirely silica, so with a lot of energy-intensive processing (solar or nuclear) oxygen could be mined, but then there's the question of what to do with all that silicon. It's a pretty brittle material.
If they can find significant deposits of water ice that would be valuable as reaction and for sustaining bases on the moon and stations in the Earth/Luna gravitational zone. As for who owns it - at the moment anyone who can get there can stake a claim
There are a lot of serious problem with men trying to live on the moon. I believe the "examine the possibility" part of the story.
Sorry, my last post should have said 'reaction mass' as in fuel for rockets workng the inner system and as a source of oxygen/water for stations. As for living there permanently yes, there would most likely be deleterious health effects for anyone trying to live 'permanently' on the moon similar to those experienced by astronauts after prolonged exposure to zero g. Mind you no-one has been able to conduct any experiments on humans in low g environments yet so we don't exactly know what effect living at 1/6th of a G for prolonged periods of time would have on the human body. They might turn out to be relatively tolerable compared to those experienced at nil g. Or not. In any event you could easily set up a 'fly in/fly out' work force the same way the big mining companies have done at remote locations here in Australia or elsewhere on Earth. 3-6 months shifts might well be doable. Or you could just telecommute most of your labour and rely on robotics wherever possible. What you couldn't or perhaps shouldn't do is set up a permanent colony. Someone born on the moon would, I think never be able to return to Earth (BTW more that happy to be corrected on this point anyone?).
My understanding is that those in zero g on the SST are in low enough orbit to get a lot of protection from deadly gamma radiation by our magnetosphere. That protection doesn't exist on the moon. I've seen references to needing about 1.5 feet of lead or 6.5 feet of concrete. The picture of the habitat in the OP article seems to show something insufficient unless that's just a portal to some ant farm like underground habitat. Am I wrong about that?
Doesn't water block cosmic radiation? Ariane Group. It will be fun to watch them try! Like hiring the handicapped.
Not wrong but researchers and engineers always envisaged that any facilities on the moon that were intended to be manned for anything more than a few days would need to be protected from radiation and micrometer impacts by either being buried under a meter or so of regolith or else placed in convenient caverns/lava tubes. You cold also I suppose find a crater of the right size, build a roof over it and then bury the roof. Finally you would still have surface installations, it would just be the living quarters that would need to be sheltered, people could do short work shifts if they had to above ground.
Yes. I think it's something like 10 feet of water being equivalent to 6 feet of concrete. So, if you had a ten foot deep swimming pool on the Moon, you could hide out under that. Of course, it would be ice, but you wouldn't want to be in the pool, anyway.
I think most of what would be mined on the moon would be used in space. One such use could be making power and then beaming it back to earth. The only mineral that would be worth sending back to earth would be a special type of helium that has only one neutron. One other purpose of the moon would be to build radio telescopes on the far side. These would be shielded from radio waves from the earth. They could also be built much bigger than on earth.
Unless a way can be found to produce or effectively recycle oxygen in space then pretty much all of this is a fantasy. Water too. If it is necessary to keep shipping those from earth to space then any mining operation will still be uneconomical.
I believe it was NASA who held a competition for building a super lightweight bulldozer robot for that purpose - since burrying a moon station is more than some moonman iis going to accomplish. The idea was that a numberr of such robots could be sent to the moon to do the work of deploying a space station in a crater and then burying it, preparing the way for some future moonman. Theere were several real problems related to low gravity. By being light, they could push only tiny loads. Plus, tthe dusty surface of the moon would give little traction to light vehicles. One idea was that a lightweight bulldozer could land on the moon and then fill a bucket on its back with a bunch of moon soil to make it heavier. But, then there were problems wiith tipping over. I think we forget how unforgiving space is. We detect water and think we're just going to send moonmen to work mines like on earth!
