For example, did Earth just happen to get clobbered by a few huge, HSE-rich rocks, whereas the moon managed to escape these catastrophic impacts? There goes the neighborhood. Would ya eat it then? After all creation is ours for the taking. Imagine: a small portable device which could take any waste petrol (eg. it costs upwards of $50,000 per kg to get robotic stuff onto the moon. Consider that the best heat conductor is diamond, but graphene is not a very good heat conductor.The most common solid phases of silver are among the best electrical conductors known, although that status does deCommon knowledge has been, "well there's nothing on the moon, but perhaps on Mars or [celestial body]" and now we are hearing conclusively that both water and gold are present.I wouldn't call that "common knowledge".
Common knowledge has been, "well there's nothing on the moon, but perhaps on Mars or [celestial body]" and now we are hearing conclusively that both water and gold are present. NASA it self?
We must go there and defeat them!but wouldn't lightening the mass of the moon have a (probably quite bad) effect on it's tidal effects to the earth?We discovered plenty of hydrocarbons on Titan. Heck, I'd have seconds, and then polish it off with a cool Budweiser.My favorite planet is the sun. Or, the other point I was trying to make, is that you could just google around. not gonna be economically viable anytime soon. It's ours for the taking because we're here. Until they revolt over the wardens inept and corrupt administration and the fact that crucial survival resources are dwindling to the danger point from being shipped to earth.Water? Lets say you found a boulder of gold that weighed three tons.
There is a lot of uncertainty in regard to the future of government sponsored space missions. Strip mining it hurts nobody since it's a dead rock, and has the potential to help people, so it should be done.More generally, this kind of thing leaves me in a bit of a bind: I like having clean air to breath, water to drink and food to eat, but if I support enviromental protection, I run the risk of supporting morons like this. So I'm still in the dark.
A project to begin mining gold on the moon? They even list a number to call to get a rebroadcast version of the press conference:"Media Telecon: LCROSS and LRO Science Science Results of Lunar Impact10.21.10You complained about not being able to access the information that we have a legal right to access freely (everything NASA does is public domain, or something like that).I guess i figured my point went without saying, but i must have been wrong. Cold ribs are blech, and rewarmed arn't much betterIf it means jettisoning the rich out into space, please hurry up about it!It is now pitch dark. Moon Express on Tuesday announced it was … That corresponds to a change in energy of 500000 J per kilogram. I remember hearing about some crazy stuff a little while back how somebody claimed ownership of the Moon and started selling plots.I remember hearing about some crazy stuff a while back, like some guy selling the Eiffel Tower. "I'm going to introduce the fool to my arm-y friend, Major Pain!". Do they carry a harpoon?Now we need to launch a nuke at the moon to make said gold radioactive for years. Get a small nuclear reactor up there and autonomous building drones (battery/nuclear powered, of course), and you've got an "unlimited" supply of water and hydrogen which could be used as a longer-term fuel source.Such developments would almost immediately improve things here on earth, too: if you've got a portable, small ore refinery for moon use, you can use it for terrestrial industry, too (for those small-return, hard-to-reach locations).Before long, you'd have enough materials and/or infrastructure on the moon that you could consider a permanent human settlement. USSR? mined [on the moon] would be several orders of magnitude higher than terrestrial costs. A firm selling plots of land on the moon said up to six million people could be eligible for a payout should moon mining firms try to extract gold, platinum or minerals. Those are the opportunities that further space exploration present.I'm sure that, if there is a financial interest in doing so, someone will figure out how to get to the moon and stay there on a semi-permanent basis - if there's a financial case for doing so.See, it's all nice to go misty eyed, chest out, with the Federation flag flapping in the wind behind you about space colonisation but think of it this way. "It's probably more volatile than other metals on the moon. It would take millennia to remove that much mass from the moon.To get material from Moon to Earth you need a delta-v of about 1 km/sec. So the question is not really "Does the moon have minerals?" And sure, earth has been supplemented by asteroids since then, but so has the moon. They are definitely correlated, but not equivlent.The best known heat conductor is diamond, but diamond is a terrible conductor of electricity.It is also good to specify the arrangement in question. If we are actually going to go there and start mining it with private companies then ownership will HAVE to be decided first. With a little more research, we'd be able to package up the results and space-drop them to Earth.You minimize it, but "small" monumental jumps have had a very big impact, historically.Also, imagine the opportunity for jump-starting another technological revolution. Maybe if they only mined the dark side of the moon....Just like when you stand on the moon and look down at the earth you see the landscape we ruined?Some of the damage we've done is visible from the moon.