Why We Must Go To The Moon To Save The Earth

Posted on 17. Nov, 2009 by Ross in New Technologies

As countries continue to bicker over the short- and medium-term goals and targets with which to combat the growing menance of climate change, one of science’s long-term prospects of making fossil fuels redundant overnight got an unexpected extra-terrestrial boost on Friday.

The presence of significant quantities of water on the Moon, as announced by NASA, will bring the economics of lunar exploration and industry drastically downwards. Whilst not making it viable enough to start producing soft toys and designer hand-bags in outer space, the Moon does have vast reserves of minerals which could become commercially exploitable not just for space-based industries such as off-planet craft construction, but for Earth-based industry too.

One of the most important examples of this are the vast reserves of Helium-3 which exist on the Moon. This rare isotope of helium is almost entirely absent from Earth: it comes from the outer layers of the Sun and is blown by solar winds across the solar system, but it is repelled by the Earth’s magnetic field. Ironically, it’s the Earth’s repulsion of the Helium-3 which creates greater quantities on the Moon.

Having come straight from one giant nuclear fusion reaction, the Helium-3 would become sought after for use in another fusion reaction: nuclear fusion power stations which could create huge supplies of clean energy for the whole world.

Controlled nuclear fusion is one of science and engineering’s holy grails, promising virtually endless amounts of clean, pollution-free energy. Successful nuclear fusion power stations would make fossil fuel reactors redundant, enabling a massive reduction in carbon emissions. Whilst the technology might still be too far off to help prevent climate change, its introduction would be a massive boost to efforts to help reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels once again.

Helium-3 has the potential to be a massive part of the nuclear fusion equation. Just 25 tonnes of He-3 could power the EU and USA for a whole year, and current estimates of the Moon’s Helium-3 reserves stand at around 1,000,000 tonnes. This means that Helium-3 would potentially be valuable enough to collect from the Moon and ship back to Earth, acting as a driver to further space industries.

Much of the fate of further industrial lunar exploitation therefore rests in the forthcoming Copenhagen Conference. The unlikely scenario of massive carbon reduction targets of the order being called for by climate scientists would probably scupper lunar industrialisation for perhaps a number of extra decades, since a massive uptake of renewable energy over the next two decades would limit the effectiveness of nuclear fusion as a climate change mitigator. Strong international co-operation but limited carbon targets would probably see nations content to pursue Helium-3 importation co-operatively.

However, poor co-operation - especially of the sort which saw China announce export embargoes on rare earth elements vital to clean technologies and other future applications - will likely trigger a new Off World gold rush, since other isotopes and elements such as neodynium and dysprosium would suddenly also become more financially viable to bulk import from the moon if national scarcities began to emerge.

With the USA, Russia, China, Japan and the EU all taking a renewed interest in lunar exploitation, after decades of neglect the Moon might soon be receiving the levels of visitation which the star-gazers and comic-readers of the 60’s believed were right around the corner.

Image of the Moon by Bernhard Christ on a CC BY-SA licence.