Mining in near zero gravity is very different from mining on earth. The tools we use here on earth wouldnt work the same way on the moon. Explosives work different in space/the moon. How will this be sorted?
You would need a massive supply of oxygen/air for people to live and work on the moon. How do we get this? What will they eat and drink there?
The amount of fuel needed to haul everything to the moon and then haul back mined material would be insane.
Finally, what minerals? I havent read up on the makeup of the moon but i do not recall there being any minerals in quatlntities vast enough to warrant mining it?
Any missions to Mars in the near future are still unmanned due to the time it takes to get there. You still have the problem of food and fuel on the journey there let alone living on the planet and coming back.
Want to Mine the Moon? Here’s a Detailed Map of all its Minerals
The prospect of mining asteroids and the Moon is on a lot of peoples’ minds lately. Maybe it’s all the growth that’s happened in the commercial aerospace industry in the past few decades.
Or perhaps it’s because of Trump’s recent
executive order to allow for asteroid and lunar mining. Either way, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs and futurists who can’t wait to start prospecting and harvest the natural bounty of space!
Coincidentally enough, future lunar miners now have a
complete map of the lunar surface, which was created by the US Geological Society’s (USGS)
Astrogeology Science Center, in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute (LPI). This map shows the distribution and classification of the mineral deposits on the Moon’s surface, effectively letting us know what its familiar patchwork of light and dark patches the really are.
Known as the “Unified Geologic Map of the Moon,” this immensely-detailed 1:5,000,000 scale map is available online and is intended for use by the scientific community, educators, and the general public. In addition, the USGS states that it will serve as a “definitive blueprint of the moon’s surface geology for future human missions.”
The full map and descriptions of mineral deposits. Credit: USGS/USRA
The USGS' Astrogeology Science Center has released a complete mineral map of the Moon, which the lunar mining crowd is sure to appreciate!
www.universetoday.com
Many countries have expressed a renewed desire to go back to the moon.
NASA has a multitude of plans to do so, China
landed a rover on the lunar farside in January and has
an active rover there right now, and
numerous other countries have their sights set on lunar missions. The necessity of using materials already present on the Moon becomes more pressing.
Artist’s concept of what lunar in-situ resource utilization might look like. Image via NASA.
Anticipation of lunar living is driving engineering and experimental work to determine how to efficiently use lunar materials to support human exploration. For example, the European Space Agency (ESA) is planning to
land a spacecraft at the lunar South Pole in 2022 to drill beneath the surface in search of water ice and other chemicals. This craft will feature a research instrument
designed to obtain water from the lunar soil or regolith.
There have even been discussions of eventually
mining and shipping back to Earth the
helium-3 locked in the lunar regolith. Helium-3 (a non-radioactive isotope of helium) could be used as fuel for fusion reactors to produce vast amounts of energy at very low environmental cost – although fusion as a power source
has not yet been demonstrated, and the volume of
extractable helium-3 is unknown.
Nonetheless, even as the true costs and benefits of lunar ISRU
remain to be seen, there is little reason to think that the
considerable current interest in mining the Moon won’t continue.
How can the cost of space travel – to and from the moon and possibly to Mars - be reduced? One approach is to mine the moon for necessary resources.
earthsky.org