How about it: China to stripmine the Moon

[11of10]

http://www.inquisitr.com/1754279/helium-3-china-intends-to-strip-mine-the-moon-to-solve-worlds-energy-problems/

Any comments on this one?

[NovaSilisko]

10 3 seconds in and I already find factual errors.

"According to Chinese State Media, China’s lunar orbiter has successfully locked into orbit around the moon. The spacecraft, dubbed the Chang’e 5, will next perform a soft landing on the surface of the moon. It’s mission is to collect four pounds of rock and soil samples before returning to Earth."

The lunar orbiter that recently entered orbit is the carrier vehicle for the test of the return capsule that was flown a few months ago. It's called Chang'e 5-T1 or CE-5-T1 (bit of an ugly name), and has no capability of landing. The full-up Chang'e 5 mission will happen around 2017.

I don't see any direct sources stating that they're going to "strip mine" the moon. The article this one links to says the exact same thing, but doesn't actually quote the guy they're referencing, nor do they provide a link to any transcript, or anything of the sort. Reeks of hyperbole and poor journalism.

And given this "inquisitr" site also has garbage like this: http://www.inquisitr.com/1754084/ghanaian-man-dies-sees-michael-jackson-and-pope-john-paul-in-hell/, I can't say I hold them in the highest regard of journalistic integrity. Nothing more than clickbait.

Edited January 15, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[astropapi1]

China Intends To Strip Mine The Moon To Solve World’s Energy Problems

Welcome to the era of clickbait.

[NovaSilisko]

You have to be extremely careful with so-called "science" journalism nowadays. People have realized that space and scientific topics are getting popular, so have started putting up any old trash in an attempt to get more attention and thus ad revenue. Stuff like the hyping up of the "NASA warp drive" which was really just a study conducted by one scientist and an artist making a rendering of it.

[Streetwind]

Here are some additional reasons why the article shouldn't be taken seriously:

1.) The moon is "rich" in He-3 only in comparison to the Earth, which has almost none due to its magnetic field and atmosphere blocking the accumulation of it. The actual resource density is still extremely small. It is thought to be between 1 and 50 parts per billion, and only in the uppermost layer (digging deeper will actually decrease the concentration). To put this into perspective: even if you had a hypothetical 100% extraction efficiency, you would have to grind through a minimum of 20,000 metric tons of lunar surface regolith in order to produce one single kilogram of helium-3. And that's a best case scenario. In the worst case, you might need a literal million tons of regolith per kg.

2.) Helium-3 fusion doesn't exist yet. Even if you had a moon mining program producing an arbitrary amount of helium-3, it wouldn't matter because there is no fusion reactor that can consume it. And helium-3 fusion isn't around the corner either... even simple hydrogen fusion hasn't yet been made workable. The best that humany has been able to achieve was a power factor of 0.7 - that is, a test reactor briefly generated up to 70% of the energy needed to keep itself alive. To run itself with no net power loss, a fusion reactor needs a power factor of 1... and to produce electricity at prices per kWh competitive with coal and fission power plants, it would need a power factor greater than 20 (scientist's estimate, no such powerplant exists to provide actual pricing data). To be the purported "free energy for everyone", it would need a power factor of well over 100, running constantly for decades. We were able to do 0.7 that lasted for a few seconds, after 50 years of research. Yeah, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

3.) Helium-3 can be artificially produced through tritium decay, and tritium can be artificially produced in fission reactors. In fact, helium-3 and tritium are routinely vented from naval reactors to get rid of them. Stationary fission power plants sell these products. They are available only in small quantities, but they're large enough for research purposes.

4.) It costs less to buy synthetic helium-3 from a fission reactor than it would cost to create a space program, develop lunar travel and landing capapbility, develop lunar mining infrastructure and grind dozens of thousands of tons of lunar surface regolith for a handful of helium-3. There is no profit in helium-3 mining until there is a demand on Earth that exceeds the artificial helium-3 production capabilities of our fission reactors to such a degree that customers are willing to pay the markup for lunar-mined goods. This demand does not exist (see 2), and even if it existed, it would drive the necessary power factor required of fusion powerplants to be price-competitive with coal even higher than it already is expected to be.

As an alternative, it is possible that helium-3 may be produced as a side product of other moon mining activities, for which there are potential business cases. But it's highly dependant on what kind of resources are found where. If you dig down deep for rare earth metals, you're not going to find much helium-3, because it exists only in surface regolith. If you mine permanently shadowed polar craters for water ice, you're not going to find much helium-3 because it is deposited by solar wind, and permanently shadowed areas don't get solar wind by definition.

5.) China's government is not concerned with ending the world's energy problems. China's government is concerned with staying in power and improving China's national might. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a totalitarian, single-party dictatorship police state that is known worldwide for the extreme lengths it goes to lie to and suppress its own citizens. It is not realistic to expect altruism without a revolution happening first (and this is highly unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future).

[Yukon0009]

@NovaSilisko The Chang'e T-1 used a free return trajectory, i think.

@Streetwind What "lie and suppress citizens"? I live in China, and yet I have the freedom to speak English, to go on the Internet, etc.

[NovaSilisko]

@NovaSilisko The Chang'e T-1 used a free return trajectory, i think.

At first it did, yes. But after that the carrier for the capsule has been maneuvering. It sat at Earth-Moon L2 for a while before moving to lunar orbit, where it resides currently.

[11of10]

Gdmn, sorry gang, seems I fell for it. Tho some google time later, seems that the BBC reported on the same thing: http://www.bbc.com/news/25141597 Tho, with a bit less enthusiasm maybe

I got hooked on this because I read some years before a similar statement about Lunar He3 being used to power human civilization...

[Nuke]

also you have proton-boron11 fusion as an alternative, and the earth is fairly rich in boron. save the helium 3 for space side reactors, such as those needed for a lunar colony.