Sunday, January 11, 2015

Is Moon Mining Economically Feasible?



Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College, London has made an assessment of whether or not the mining the moon would be economically feasible. One of the points he makes is that strip-mining the resource helium-3 would be that it is a fossil fuel so once it's used up there is no more and that instead of trying to find ways of using that for power we should use it instead to find a renewable resource that would better for us in the long run. He also points that we should know exactly how much water there is inside the moon before planning accordingly. Not to mention the possibility of rare elements that are scarce on earth being found in abundance in the moon or from left over asteroids that have hit it during its existence. While mining the moon might give us resources we still have to think of the consequences if we go through with this. The moon has protected us from asteroids and meteor for ages and if we were to mine it we would decrease its size and stability which cause it to break or explode if another asteroid were to hit which could become detrimental to us. While mining the moon wouldn't be a bad thing we should see all the problems that it might cause in the future.

http://www.space.com/28189-moon-mining-economic-feasibility.html

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