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Photo by Rachel Moore on Unsplash
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The solar wind sweeps out from the Sun in every direction. The Earth is protected from this sleet of particles and energy by the magnetic field that surrounds the planet. The Moon enjoys no such protection. For the last three billion years it has been bombarded by the particle laden breeze, hence the presence of Helium-3 on the Moon.
Helium-3 or He3, it turns out, can make nuclear fusion a much more efficient process. How much He3 is there? There is an estimated one million metric tons trapped in lunar soil worth about 3 billion dollars per ton. What!? This is based on the energy it would produce at current prices. That turns out to be three quadrillion dollars, but if fusion were commercially implemented prices would drop, right? So, I reduced the value for the title of the article. Keep in mind, however, the He3 allows fusion to take place without spitting out a bunch of neutrons that create high levels of radiation. This means smaller, even mobile fusion reactors can be built. I may be off a bit to discount it the value by 2/3. Still, wars have been fought over less.
Now, lo and behold, not only the U.S. but China, Russia, India, and Europe are planning Moon missions. North Korea and South Korea are thinking about it. Israel’s Moon mission has already begun, launching February 21 of this year.
This is one of the greatest opportunities of our lifetimes. Nuclear fusion will be accomplished and it won’t be thirty years from now. It will be half that. Those willing to act on this will make Apple’s and Google’s fortunes pale in comparison. The great part is you don’t have to know anything about nuclear fusion to participate in this. NASA is begging for technology to be provided by private industry. So far it is the typical stuff - parts of the Lunar Orbital Platform/Gateway, Moon landers and rovers, logistical vehicles.
As the mapping of resources on the Moon proceeds it will become more and more obvious how much is there. Not only is there He3. There is water, an invaluable space commodity. It can be used for drinking, cleaning, growing things, rocket fuel, and radiation shielding. Currently it is currently worth about $7,200 per gallon in space. There is one more thing that no one is talking about but it is still there - the 3 trillion kilotons of asteroid material that has collected there over the last 3 billion years. Yes, all of that 3 trillion kilotons of asteroid material, the He3, and the water. Now do you see why everyone wants to go to the Moon, and why the timeline for commercial fusion is not that critical?
There is a problem. All of that wealth, except maybe the water, is distributed evenly on the Moon’s 39 million square kilometers. There is no way it will be mapped completely from orbit. It will require remotely operated and semi-autonomous drones crawling around on the Moon looking for this stuff. These drones should have all the necessary detectors needed plus armor and weapons if the salient countries don’t come up with a treaty on how this wealth is to be divided. Once located, will it just be scooped up and transported to a central processing center or will a processing unit come to the site? Either way, the final product has to be taken to a lunar location or hauled into space and used there or transported back to Earth. Water will never be transported back to Earth, and a surprising amount of the recovered metal may stay on the Moon or in space to build stuff. Most of the He3 will be shipped to Earth, but some will stay on the Moon to run fusion reactors or loaded into interplanetary or even intergalactic probes carrying small fusion reactors.
Now, re-read the above paragraph and extrapolate the number of devices and logistic vehicles and processing plants and gizmos that are going to be required to do this: Prospecting drones, lunar backhoes, regolith haulers, low gravity material processors that operate in a vacuum, ore furnaces, robotic handlers, surface to orbit shuttles, pre-fab camps for humans, software to control it all. The individuals and companies that start to plan on how to do this and begin working out the details of how all this equipment will be designed will have a jump on billions of dollars worth of revenue. They will also have a jump on the next phase of this process - the 150 million asteroids in the inner Solar System.
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