Russia to build a mine on the moon

[countzero]

russia plans to mine the moon for Helium-3.

http://www.physorg.com/news10221.html

millenium & deuteros, anyone ?

[countzero]

by the way, the resources on the moon ... Are they available as first come first serve basis ? does anyone know the legal status of this plan ?

[odin]

How the hell is Russia going to pay for that...

[Cymric]

As far as I know, there is a treaty in place (sort-of similar to the Law of the Sea) which states that anything beyond x km of Earth's surface belongs to everyone, and thus the UN. (See here, for example.) But knowing human nature, it won't be for long until someone decides that those damn are mining too much He-3 or ice, causing all hell to break loose. Some right-wingers in the United States already consider the Moon to belong to them, because they were the first to set foot on it. A sort-of finders-keepers mentality which sickens me to my stomach. To the wall with the lot of them. I also have no doubt that eventually the Moon will become an independent nation simply because any other situation will be met with disapproval, jealousy and military conflict. (Besides, it is sort-of impossible to genuinely consider people 400.000 km away to be your masters. As in: who and what army?)

I can heartily recommend Ben Bova's excellent SF series Moonrise and Moonwar for a brilliant story based on precisely this situation.

[Hyperspeed]

Pssst, between you and me - it's cheese they're really after!

[PMC]

Current Russian policy to supply most of Europe with gas and oil - and also Asia when the Sakhalin complex is on stream - is earning them huge revenues.

In the next fifty years, we will see a gradual move away from fossil fuels.  If Russia is serious about mining He3, then it stands to continue to gain financially by scaling back it's oil & gas production in favour of monopolising the world's supply of He3.

However, the practical problems are enormous.  Remember that no-one has walked on the moon since 1972 and no Cosmonaut has walked on the moon at all.  Russia does have extensive experience with automated space vehicles, but it's unlikely that the mining and shipping processes can be entirely automated.  

Although sources of oxygen and water have been identified, considerable engineering work would be required to shield cosmonauts from solar radiation and micro meteorites.  It's cost upward of $60bn to put a space station into orbit the size of three double decker busses and crewed by five people.  The ISS crew is also less than 300 miles from the Earth as opposed to the 250,000 miles to Earth from the lunar surface.  

[Agafaster]

dont forget that it was NASA that put the ISS up - using the Space Shuttle.

In general, they like to over think their plans, and try for the Rolls-Royce solution...

cf: manned mars exploration by NASA, and Rick Zubrin's Mars Direct plan:
compare 400 Billion USD to 35 Billion USD...

oh - the ISS is about 500km above the Earth, and in an orbit inclined about 50 degrees to the equatorial plane.

-edited to correct the finances ... still not sure of the costs estimated by NASA in Bush Snr's presidency, but it was sufficiently large for congress to balk !!

[Speelgoedmannetje]

odin wrote:
How the hell is Russia going to pay for that...

Gas... :-/

[Hyperspeed]

Speaking of Rolls Royce and the Moon...

Rolls Royce made the Pegasus Turbofan which keeps the Harrier jump jet floating. Strangely enough they didn't perfect the hovering stability of the jump jet until the 80s...

So how did they manage to land an even more advanced 'lunar module' on the moon 10 years earlier - a surface 200,000 miles away, with a device that looked like a bunk-bed powered by compressed gas and then drive a jeep across the surface and plant the Stars & Stripes.

Hollywood? YEEHAW!

[whabang]

Space flight is relatively simple. It's getting into, and out of, space that is the problem. Besides, if the Russians get working fusion reactors, then we'd really be able to make good use of ion-engines.

All we need is launching/landing platforms, here and on the moon. That is of course quite costly, but as ohers have pointed out: The Russians have a fortune in un-exploited natural resources.

[Hyperspeed]

Space flight maybe be simpler than flight on Earth but that lunar module still had to contend with lunar gravity, landing and launching trajectories and docking, varying landing and launching weights and filming for the camera left on the moon. I don't understand how they managed such a feat 30yrs ago on the processing power of a calculator.

My favourite idea for space propulsion is the large metallic sail that NASA proposed building to catch the solar particles. They used the idea in one of the last Star Wars films, it's kind of goofy!

I read about one idea for space propulsion that involved bending space around the nose of a spaceship to create a tiddlywinks effect. When you think that we are finding stars with Earth-like planets that are 20,000 light years away (and that's just to the centre of OUR galaxy) then we are going to have to work out how to travel faster than any particle in the magnetic spectrum.

As for these new Fusion reactors, the first of which is to be built in France soon, has anyone stopped to consider that when Fission was first invented the first use killed 300,000 people? That may have been a mis-use but what happens with Fusion if you get a Chernobyl?

[Tigger]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Space flight maybe be simpler than flight on Earth but that lunar module still had to contend with lunar gravity, landing and launching trajectories and docking, varying landing and launching weights and filming for the camera left on the moon. I don't understand how they managed such a feat 30yrs ago on the processing power of a calculator.

Please tell me you are kidding with your hints that the moon launch didnt happen, or that 12 americans didnt walk on its surface, or are you really that delusional??

As for these new Fusion reactors, the first of which is to be built in France soon, has anyone stopped to consider that when Fission was first invented the first use killed 300,000 people? That may have been a mis-use but what happens with Fusion if you get a Chernobyl?

Also you need to read alot about the history of fission if you really believe the above.
     -Tig

[Hyperspeed]

Back in 1950s America (when everyone sat around with their pipe, slippers and knitted tanktop) a radio show was broadcast. It was a dramatisation of War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells and it was so realistic that half the radio listening population thought that real aliens from the planet Mars were invading.

Back in 1970s America (when everyone sat around with their bongs, platforms and flower-power t-shirts) a TV program was broadcast. It claimed that Earth Men from the nation of 'America' had defeated the evil communists and driven a dune buggy on the moon whilst posing for photographs, falling arseways over moon dust, bouncing around and then blasting back off in their magical spaceship.

Tigger: Did YOU believe this 'Pooh'?

[Tigger]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Back in 1950s America (when everyone sat around with their pipe, slippers and knitted tanktop) a radio show was broadcast. It was a dramatisation of War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells and it was so realistic that half the radio listening population thought that real aliens from the planet Mars were invading.

I notice you and history have a big schism in reality, the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles occured in 1938 not in the 1950s.

Back in 1970s America (when everyone sat around with their bongs, platforms and flower-power t-shirts) a TV program was broadcast. It claimed that Earth Men from the nation of 'America' had defeated the evil communists and driven a dune buggy on the moon whilst posing for photographs, falling arseways over moon dust, bouncing around and then blasting back off in their magical spaceship.

Sorry in 1969, I wasnt sitting around with a bong or a flower power shirt, instead I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.  Just to satisfy my curiosity when does your little mind think the hoax started, was Apollo 7 a hoax when they did the first live tv broadcast from a manned spacecraft.  Or did they start it with Apollo 8 when they broadcast live while orbitting the moon, Or Apollo 9 when they first tested the lunar module, or was Apollo 10 when we first received color TV signals from space, all of which is pretty hard to fake out not only the US, but of course the russians who would have loved to say, the US isnt really orbiting the moon.   Or is it just Apollo 11 you think was the hoax when they first landed on the moon??   Apollo 12 a fake too, though they recovered parts of Surveyer 3??  Apollo 13 a hoax even though they never claimed to land on the moon??   Why fake not landing on the moon in you opinion??    Apollos 14-17 all fakes in your mind as well.  A conservative estimate places the number of people in on a fake of this magnitude to be 27,000 honestly believe that since that time the number obviously having grown into the millions that still this grand conspiracy has yet to be revealed???  Learn a little, before responding.
    -Tig

I notice you and history have a big schism in reality

Since when have racism and ignorance ever got in the way of a paranoid delusion Tig? ;-)