Silicon Valley start-up looking to mine the moon
latimesblogs.latimes.com
latimesblogs.latimes.com
A couple key quotes: "The UN says that private expeditions count as national activities and are covered by the treaty, which has been signed by all the major players. Lawyers disagreed and a second agreement - the 1979 International Moon Treaty - was drawn up to explicitly ban private ownership of lunar real estate." -http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/oct/24/spaceexplorati...
"the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
Some good articles on trying to use the moon for private gain:
http://www.moonshop.com/ - warning: 1998 wants its web design back.
They better not dig on my land!
A well-capitalised moon mining operation could maintain a base in space and send energy to Earth via laser beam (or whatever similar scientific approach you favour). I'm sure that governments could confiscate earth-bound assets of such enterprises, but they will presumably retaliate by keeping all their assets in space.
I think that exploitation of space (as an activity) will completely screw with our concepts of "nation" and "government". Once a private enterprise can go mine asteroids they're going to have far more capital (i.e. money) than any nation on Earth.
So you're saying that I have a super-energetic space-based laser, and that I would retaliate by stockpiling energy? I'm pretty sure I would just aim the laser at some target of strategic value and watch it melt instead.
Highly illegal, maybe... but what's the point of having a space-based laser if you don't get to unleash it from time to time upon your enemies?
Private enterprises like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers have had more money than any nation on Earth for more than a century.
Generally to understand the history of any advanced civilization you have to follow the money. And since 1815 Rothschild have had enough capital and reputation amongst private investors to decide who rules in most countries, which country has the credit to start a war, which country/alliance has the money to win a war, etc
Dude, that's such an utter cop-out.
http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmith_Rothschild.h... (timeline with narrative)
http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmith_Bankers.htm (banking and usury timeline in general)
http://www.iamthewitness.com/doc/RothschildsTimeline.ppt (powerpoint slide deck on Rothschilds from the sources above)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/re... (how Nathan Rothschild cornered the London Stock Exchange and became a billionaire in early 1800s).
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5352106773770802849 (Money as Debt - quintessential primer on fractional reserve banking and debt)
Money Masters - http://www.sprword.com/videos/moneymasters/
The Secret of Oz Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cq9yEVcGIU
A few more http://linkedtheory.blogspot.com/2011/02/world-economic-coll...
There were many other technologies that had the potential to change the global political system, like the Internet.
thats just great!! aliens havent even landed, but they are already terrorists!!
- second thought, perhaps thats why they dont want to reveal themselves: not to get jailtime!
- how speculative are they about the rare material they intend to find?
- how are they going to mine and transport them?
- how much is it going to cost?
- will it be worth it in the end, compared to earth mining (which to this day still requires considerable manpower)?
Until such questions are answered, I think it would be more appropriate to look at this more as robotic experiment, not a moon mining startup project.
But what I like about these guys is that they're in kick down the door and get a search warrant later mode. There is a demonstrated capability in the Falcon9 project to get an earth/lunar/lunar-surface mission together. If you borrow the Merlin engine from SpaceX for your rover, autonomous landing in a gravity well with a power variable engine is a solved problem. [2] So most of the questions vis-a-vis "How do I get something on to the surface to mine?" is an engineering / cost problem rather than a 'create from whole cloth' problem.
The 'knotty bits' in this particular endeavor are then three;
a) Do we deliver a return capability to the surface (aka a return craft) or do we create it on the surface from materials we find there?
b) What is the energy infrastructure, solar? nuclear? And do we build it on site or do we transport it?
c) Of the prioritized targets (in terms of value per lifted ounce of the surface and into low earth orbit) what are the extraction techniques for each and their repeatability?
That would be a helluva lot of fun to play with wouldn't it? Building a series of modules that could deploy on the lunar surface and provide a refinery capability.
Presumably there is a scenario where you put a variety of payloads on the moon and a means to assemble into the infrastructure you need.
[1] http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ea.05.0...
For instance, here's a map of where cobalt comes from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/2005cobalt_%28.... (Cobalt is essential in making the alloys used in jet engines, so a loss of access to cobalt could serious harm the US militarily).
Having an emergency backup plan for these minerals, such as moon mining, would be good even if it is expensive.
The much bigger obstacle will be political, breezy as the article is about ownership of lunar resources.
Basically, it's really hard to mine in those conditions. And when I say "conditions," I mean down to 50K. Lots of familiar materials just won't work at those temps.
Mining, instead, for high-value minerals would presumably not require such extremely low temperatures. It would, however, still have to endure many of the other issues we faced: never-eroded (read: abrasive) regolith, the vacuum of space, reduced reactionary mass, etc.
I wish them luck!
Only one organisation managed to send astronauts there and bring them back.
There are plans to do it again, but you can bet space exploration will remain state controlled for a very long time.
These guys probably just want to win the Google challenge and do some cool spaceship stuff and need a story to tell investors.
AFAIK, there never been any digger machines located on the moon, so... :)
There aren't any trojan asteroids in the earth-moon system according to http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/observatory_l2.html, but there are quite a few close approachers which could potentially be redirected closer to Earth.
btw, this is not a new idea, so there's no excuse for not knowing about this, especially if you're in the field: http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/1982-harvesting.htm
Plus who would wont some limited liability startup to redirect asteroids closer to Earth, probably using big thermonukes?
A 200 metre asteroid might make a pretty big hole, but then so would profitable quantities of ore coming back, or a rocket capable of getting to the moon in the first place. Nobody seems to be too worried about SpaceX accidentally crashing their moon-capable rockets into a city.
The point behind the rocket analogy was that rockets are inherently dangerous, uncontrolled projectiles. They explode, spin out of control, travel at hundreds or thousands of km/hr - but that's apparently ok. And it is, because there are safeguards in place.
a) how are you getting the ore back to earth? Your choice is to either burn it back in on a rocket or splash down your hundred or thousand tons of platinum somewhere. Rockets are hideously expensive, which leaves you with... an uncontrolled projectile.
b) mass drivers have a small amount of thrust, over a long period of time. It might take a couple of years to get it captured by earth - think slow orbit corrections over time rather than an uncontrolled asteroid missile. Once you get to that point, you'll have several more years to circularise the orbit. Hardly an uncontrolled projectile - Its path is easy to predict, and is incredibly unlikely to hit the earth. You'd need to burn a lot of energy to do so once it's in a stable orbit.
My main point is that rockets have a big red button, and an 8,000,000,000kg rock does not.
All I can say is good luck, and that I hope to see lots of competition for these guys in the near future.
I'll post a link where you can donate money for this completely legit organisation shortly.
When I was in college, I was hanging out with some guys who worked for Greenpeace. I asked them, "how would you feel about mining the moon for raw materials?" The response I got back was basically, "NO!", "THAT'S HORRIBLE!", "O.M.G. YOU'RE EVIL!"
I tried to explain that the moon was a big, lifeless, ball of rock. But they were having none of it. They all thought we should leave the moon alone, pristine in its lifelessness. <shrug>