U.S. will lag behind in utilization of resources on the Moon.

[Exoscientist]

 Quite annoying that NASA won’t be including any instruments on the VIPER lander to detect heavy metals at the lunar South pole, only for detecting water and light elements. Nor will the Astrobotic Peregrine commercial lander. 

 The LCROSS mission provided tantalizing hints of valuable metals from its orbital observations: 

Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds. 
Science Oct 21, 2010 2:05 PM EDT.
There is water on the moon … along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That’s according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon’s South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/its-confirmed-there-is-water

 And a Japanese lunar orbiter gave indications of uranium: 

Uranium could be mined on the Moon.  Uranium could one day be mined on the Moon after a Japanese spacecraft discovered the element on its surface. 
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 4:58PM BST 01 Jul 2009.
The space probe Kaguya detected the radioactive element in samples of the Moon's surface with a gamma-ray spectrometer, along with thorium, potassium, magnesium, silicon, calcium, titanium and iron.
The discovery opens up the possibility of mining operations on a commercial basis or even nuclear power plants being constructed on the Moon.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110423155534/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5711129/Uranium-could-be-mined-on-the-Moon.html

  The later Surveyor landers on the Moon since the 60’s all contained x-ray spectrometers(XRF) for detecting heavy elements. And all of the Mars landers since the Viking landers in the 70’s either had XRF spectrometers or more accurate alpha-proton x-ray spectrometers(APXS) for detecting heavy elements.

 Moreover, both the Indian lunar south polar lander and the Chinese lander to the Moon’s South Pole will contain instruments for measuring heavy elements.

 It’s bizarre that the U.S.’s landers VIPER and Astrobotic Peregrine to the lunar South Pole will be the only ones to ANY space body, probably numbering into the couple of dozen now, that won’t have instruments for detecting heavy elements.

 There’s no guarantee that India or China will share with the U.S. the discovery by their landers of valuable metals or other minerals on the Moon. They would probably figure if the U.S. didn’t see the importance of including such instruments on their own  missions to the lunar South Pole, then that’s their problem.

  Robert Clark

Edited July 29, 2023 by Exoscientist
Edited to remove extra lines in copied text.

[Meecrob]

I believe they did not include heavy meal detectors on missions to the lunar south pole because we do not require heavy metals such as uranium to survive on the moon, but we do need water and other volatile organic compounds to survive. NASA is putting humans on the moon, not mining it.

Keep in mind, nobody has any capacity to mine anything from space currently. Something tells me though, the agency who gets a human habitation set up first will have most of the unknowns about space mining figured out just from solving the problems of setting up a permanent base.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Meecrob said:

I believe they did not include heavy meal detectors on missions to the lunar south pole because we do not require heavy metals such as uranium to survive on the moon, but we do need water and other volatile organic compounds to survive. NASA is putting humans on the moon, not mining it.

Keep in mind, nobody has any capacity to mine anything from space currently. Something tells me though, the agency who gets a human habitation set up first will have most of the unknowns about space mining figured out just from solving the problems of setting up a permanent base.

This, if you want an nuclear reactor they will assemble it on earth and send it to the moon, then start it there.
As for useful materials, first is oxygen, then its water / hydrogen. Regolith is also very useful for radiation shielding insulation and armor but its just dirt you move around. 
Once you have an large base with fuel production going you probably want to make metals as in aluminium or steel and solar panels, carbon is also nice, you will not make anything more complex than structural elements and perhaps solar panels.  Yes you will have stuff like 3d printers and other manufacturing tools but this is to have an machine shop who can make stuff you need without waiting for it to be sent from earth. 

Now down the line the Moon has had lots of asteroid impacts, some huge metal asteroids so large they change the moons gravitation field enough to deorbit satellites. 
This might compete with asteroid mining, the moon is much closer but the metal is underground and you have to overcome the moons gravity to get this into orbit. 
On the other hand this can be solved with lots of equipment, asteroid mining require much more automation out of the box thinking. 

[cubinator]

8 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

There’s no guarantee that India or China will share with the U.S. the discovery by their landers of valuable metals or other minerals on the Moon. They would probably figure if the U.S. didn’t see the importance of including such instruments on their own  missions to the lunar South Pole, then that’s their problem.

The railgun shipping those metals to lunar orbit will be pretty obvious, whichever country first builds it.

[steve9728]

The cost of mining and smelting in space and bringing it back to Earth is nothing less than finding a place to mine on Earth. This is especially true for countries like China, which is particularly rich in rare earth resources and has a particularly mature rare earth resource processing industry chain. The only mineral that might be fair value for cost, I think, would be Helium-3. But according to Wiki, although He-3 is richer than Earth. But there still needs at least 150t of regolith to get 1g of it.

Speaking of mining, meanwhile, CNSA is soliciting lunar surface science payload programs:

On 7/17/2023 at 9:33 PM, steve9728 said:

 (3). Lunar surface drilling payload

• Total mass ≯ 290kg, total envelope dimensions 1810mm × 1510mm × 930mm, with the ability to move, obstacle avoidance and meet the working hours of lunar surface survival.
• Peak power <450W.
• With ≮10m lunar sample drilling, order preservation, fidelity and encapsulation, and other capabilities, and can be drilled in the thermal, magnetic, seismic, and other detection."

Edited July 25, 2023 by steve9728

[kerbiloid]

The Martian also contains nitrogen.

By scooping it and converting into ammonia (with hydrogen from water ice), they can produce the ammolox fuel pair, and even hydrazine.

As there is a lot of CO2, they can produce N-methylhydrazines as well.

[tater]

14 hours ago, cubinator said:

The railgun shipping those metals to lunar orbit will be pretty obvious, whichever country first builds it.

10 hours ago, steve9728 said:

The cost of mining and smelting in space and bringing it back to Earth is nothing less than finding a place to mine on Earth.

TANSTAAFL!

[RCgothic]

16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

This, if you want an nuclear reactor they will assemble it on earth and send it to the moon, then start it there.

As a nuclear engineer I concur. The supply chain for nuclear fuel fabrication has many steps, is energy intensive, and requires minute tolerances. That's not even counting cladding materials and poisons.

They would definitely be shipping nuclear fuel from earth for the foreseeable future.

[jimmymcgoochie]

How about we start with putting people on the Moon for more than three days at a time and work from there, hmm? Earth has enough problems right now without "oops a hundred ton container of uranium burst after getting fired from a railgun on the Moon and is about to erase half a continent" joining the list.

[kerbiloid]

1. Start building a fortified rocket base on the Moon.

2. Widely report and discuss on TV.

3. Let everyone know that it's almost operational and invulnerable.

.......

9.Start mining the uranium penetrators from the former base crater.

10 PROFIT!!!

Edited July 26, 2023 by kerbiloid

[farmerben]

The easiest form of mining is to drag a magnet across the surface of the moon and harvest ferrous dust.  Then the difficulty is smelting iron on the surface of the moon.

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, steve9728 said:

The cost of mining and smelting in space and bringing it back to Earth is nothing less than finding a place to mine on Earth. This is especially true for countries like China, which is particularly rich in rare earth resources and has a particularly mature rare earth resource processing industry chain. The only mineral that might be fair value for cost, I think, would be Helium-3. But according to Wiki, although He-3 is richer than Earth. But there still needs at least 150t of regolith to get 1g of it.

Speaking of mining, meanwhile, CNSA is soliciting lunar surface science payload programs:

Little interest in returning stuff to the earth near time and probably this century, primary use is on the moon itself later in space, fuel is an big one. We know the impact ISRU has in KSP 1. 

[steve9728]

27 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Little interest in returning stuff to the earth near time and probably this century, primary use is on the moon itself later in space, fuel is an big one. We know the impact ISRU has in KSP 1. 

But the thing is, just to move a set of metal smelting production lines from Earth to the Moon as well would require quite a bit of cost - and just for the use on the moon. Not to mention if it's a rare earth resources smelting line on the moon. That really needs the whole country and try their best to do that.

I think, current scientific progress on Earth still needs to be developed further to be worthy of such 'at any cost' approach to resource exploitation.

[KSK]

“Mister President, we must not allow a mine shaft moon mine gap!”

[tater]

I literally read that ^^^ in George C Scott's voice.

[RCgothic]

6 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

How about we start with putting people on the Moon for more than three days at a time and work from there, hmm? Earth has enough problems right now without "oops a hundred ton container of uranium burst after getting fired from a railgun on the Moon and is about to erase half a continent" joining the list.

Unless the uranium has been in a reactor this is not a big deal. Unirradiated fuel is barely radioactive, mostly only emits alpha particles at a very low rate, and is likely dense enough to survive re-entry mostly in one piece without getting scattered by vapourisation in the upper atmosphere. It can be safely handled with thin unshielded gloves.

[darthgently]

Given the various numbers tossed around for lunar Starship payload to lunar surface, "at any cost" could be a relative bargain. So maybe we'll see a handful of lunar industrial process prototypes that are more than shoebox sized experiments.  A test bed for upscaled concepts.  Manufacturing PVs from local materials for local use etc.   

Edited July 25, 2023 by darthgently

[jimmymcgoochie]

12 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Unless the uranium has been in a reactor this is not a big deal. Unirradiated fuel is barely radioactive, mostly only emits alpha particles at a very low rate, and is likely dense enough to survive re-entry mostly in one piece without getting scattered by vapourisation in the upper atmosphere. It can be safely handled with thin unshielded gloves.

It’s also dense enough to survive re-entry and come raining down out of the sky at potentially supersonic speeds like a giant cluster bomb of supersized anti-tank shells. Weather forecast, cloudy with a chance of trans-lunar MIRV. (Not to mention the obvious deliberate use of such a technology as a weapon…)

[Shpaget]

It's gonna take quite a few years and permanent residents before it becomes cheaper to produce metals on Moon than it is to ship them from Earth.

In the meantime, there will be plenty of opportunities for someone to take a rover and hand pick more samples in a day than a lander ever could.

[Exoscientist]

 The upcoming lunar lander from Japan will also include an X-ray spectrometer for detecting heavy metals:

Japan gearing up to launch small moon lander next month.
By Andrew Jones published about 17 hours ago.
SLIM is scheduled to lift off on Aug. 25.
Also joining the lunar ride will be the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, a JAXA-NASA collaborative mission that also involves participation from the European Space Agency. 
https://www.space.com/japan-slim-moon-lander-launch-august-2023

 This lander will not be to the lunar South Pole but this still confirms the point that every other lander to ANY space body, including asteroids and comets, always contains detectors for measuring heavy elements.

It borders on the bizarre that the landers from the U.S. will be the only ones to not include such detectors.

   Bob Clark

Edited July 29, 2023 by Exoscientist
Edit: I just found out how to include a “line break” without an extra line being included. You use “shift-Return” key. Previously when I copied from articles an extra line was added after each line.

[darthgently]

24 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

It borders on the bizarre that the landers from the U.S. will be the only ones to not include such detectors.

Maybe astronauts on LSS will have tricorders capable of spectometry covering the entire EM spectrum, not just X-ray.   Kidding, of course. 

Maybe NASA is more intent on sample return for both Mars and Moon such that endless tests can be done earthside and keeping on-board sensors specific informing decisions on where to move the rover and answering specific questions more amenable to payload considerations?  Don't know

[Shpaget]

29 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

JAXA-NASA collaborative mission

 

30 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

JAXA-NASA

 

30 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

NASA

So they do participate in lunar landers having detectors for metals.

Also worth mentioning that NASA already has 2000+ samples of actual lunar soil, totaling almost 400 kilograms from six different sites.

[Exoscientist]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

Maybe astronauts on LSS will have tricorders capable of spectometry covering the entire EM spectrum, not just X-ray.   Kidding, of course. 

Maybe NASA is more intent on sample return for both Mars and Moon such that endless tests can be done earthside and keeping on-board sensors specific informing decisions on where to move the rover and answering specific questions more amenable to payload considerations?  Don't know

 

 Even the little Sojouner rover on the Mars Pathfinder mission had its own alpha-proton x-ray(APXS) spectrometer:

 The APXS is the round instrument in front.

 The Sojourner rover only weighed 25 lbs, 4 lbs in the Moons 1/6th gravity, and only needed 15 watts to run on, which can be supplied by a few oz of rechargeable lithium batteries.

 It would be pretty cool if astronauts to the lunar South Pole would be carrying their own instruments for prospecting for valuable metals.

   Robert Clark

Edited July 29, 2023 by Exoscientist

[farmerben]

We have already surveyed the surface of the moon for uranium and thorium.

 

 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2010GL043061

[Exoscientist]

3 hours ago, Shpaget said:

So they do participate in lunar landers having detectors for metals.

Also worth mentioning that NASA already has 2000+ samples of actual lunar soil, totaling almost 400 kilograms from six different sites.

  Fortunate that JAXA was the lead agency on the mission. If it were led by NASA, then when asked about including a heavy metal detector, they would have said, "Nah,we don't need that."

  Robert Clark