China wants to mine the moon for a rare element to use in nuclear fusion but doing so may
violate international law.
Somehow everything I just said is real and not the backstory of Fallout 4.
Hello again space cadets, Julian here for DNews.
To reiterate, because I cannot stress enough that this is real, China is seriously considering
mining the moon.
But not for anything so worthless as gold or platinum.
No no, for a rare isotope of helium called helium 3.
Helium 3 is different than 99.999% of helium on Earth, helium 4.
Helium 3’s nucleus consists of 2 protons and one neutron, and it’s theorized that
it can be used for clean nuclear fusion.
However helium 3 hasn’t been given much attention because it’s extremely rare and
expensive.
Currently Helium 3 is sold for about $1,000 per gram, or a billion dollars per metric
ton.
By comparison at today’s prices platinum sells for a piddling 39.7 million dollars
per metric ton.
Helium 3 may be rare here on earth, but it’s not on the moon.
Or at least it’s much less so.
Helium 3 is in the solar wind that gets deflected away by our magnetosphere, but the moon has
no magnetic field and so Helium 3 has slowly been deposited on its surface over billions
of years.
While it’s estimated the Earth only has 15 tons of the stuff total, the moon may have
between 1 and 5 million tons.
That still means that hundreds of millions of tons of lunar soil will have to be processed
just to get one ton of helium 3.
So is all this just lunacy?
Well right now, pretty much, yeah.
But China isn’t planning on doing it right this second.
It’s all the dream of Ouyang Ziyuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and he’s shooting
for the moon in the next 50 years.
Which is probably a good time frame, because as of right now, even if we could mine and
ship Helium 3 from the moon on a large scale, we wouldn’t be able to use it.
Fusing helium 3 would require much more initial energy than fusing hydrogen isotopes, so while
it may produce power without a radioactive byproduct, it’s still expected to be used
in the second generation of fusion reactors.
And we still haven’t gotten to the first.
But if Helium 3 can be used it will yield hundreds of times more energy than it costs
to mine and ship; only 40 tons of it can meet the US’s energy demands for a year.
There’s also the question of who owns the moon.
Personally I think if your flag is on it, you have dibs, but apparently that’s not
how it works.
There’s actually a treaty from 1967, called the “Treaty on Principles Governing the
Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and
Other Celestial Bodies” but all it’s friends call it the Outer Space treaty.
It’s been ratified by 102 countries, including China, and in it, it states “the exploration
and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit of all countries and shall
be the province of all mankind.”
Whether this means no one owns the moon or that everyone owns the moon is debated by
space lawyers, and yes, apparently that is an actual profession.
But China is starting to put feelers out, with the Chang’e 5 planned to land on the
moon and return with samples by 2017.
If Helium 3 can be used for nuclear fusion, and if sending missions to the moon and extracting
it is economically viable, and if the international community agrees to it, then maybe one day
mining the earth for coal will sound as ridiculous as mining the moon does now.
Space is one of my favorite topics but there’s a lot of junk information floating around
out there.
Our own Amy Shira Teitel debunks 5 space myths in Life Noggin’s video over here.
Do you have a favorite idea that sounds totally sci-fi but could actually become reality?
Let us know in the comments and I’ll see you next time on DNews.