Space Laws and Commerce

The potentcial returns on mining one of these babies some say would be equal to the GNP of the U.S of A

news.discovery.com...
Good read^
This thread was prompted by an interview I had seen recently with Neil deGrasse Tyson, in it he mentioned the fact that the real reason we went into space and did moon landings was because we were at war with the Soviets but once we had beaten them to the moon our reason for going there was spent,sometime during that era Space Laws were enacted by the U.N that one could not own anything in Space not brought there by you, but recently billionaire investors were toying with the idea of asteroid mining and I read an article about mining Helium3 on the Moon

Mining Helium-3 on the Moon One of many problems associated with using helium-3 to create energy via nuclear fusion is that, at least on the Earth, helium-3 is very, very rare indeed. Helium-3 is produced as a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which could net a supply of around 15Kg a year. Helium-3 is, however, emitted by the Sun within its solar winds. Our atmosphere prevents any of this helium-3 arriving on the Earth. However, as it does not have an atmosphere, there is nothing to stop helium-3 arriving on the surface of the Moon and being absorbed by the lunar soil. As a result, it has been estimated that there are around 1,100,000 metric tonnes of helium-3 on the surface of the Moon down to a depth of a few metres. This helium-3 could potentially be extracted by heating the lunar dust to around 600 degrees C, before bringing it back to the Earth to fuel a new generation of nuclear fusion power plants. As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 -- or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth -- could power the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne -- making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities. Due to the above it is perhaps hardly surprising that a serious interest is being taken in lunar helium-3. In 2006 Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian space corporation Energia, was reported to have said that Russia is planning to mine lunar helium-3, with a permanent Moon base to be established by 2015 and industrial-scale helium-3 production to commence by 2020. The Americans also have plans, with NASA having announced its intention to establish a permanent base on one of the Moon's poles by 2024, and with helium-3 signalled as one of the reasons behind this mission. As reported by China View, China is also in the race, and plans to put a man Moon by 2017. One of the goals of the mission will be to measure the thickness of the lunar soil and the amount of helium-3 on the Moon. There have also been reports that India, Japan and Germany are taking an interest in lunar exploration linked to helium-3 as a potential future nuclear fuel.
www.explainingthefuture.com...

Question if we scrap most of the Laws about owning bodies in Space lets say except planets and our moon is it less likely we would go to war over such vast resources or would we usher in a new golden age where war and want was a thing of the past and less polluting here on earth witness the birth of the first trillionair I am ready to throw in what little I have into such a project.

Once they create reactors that can run from this, it means that ION drives on board other space vessels could be powered quite easily without lifting massive amounts of fuel from the surface.

Trips to mars and other planets could be far more efficient with a stepping stone like H3 from the moon.

This is all getting a bit creepy though. The moon is already pretty "convenient" in many ways like protecting us from meteors, giving our oceans motion, our night reflected light etc and now we find that all the fuel we need is on it too and a perfect staging point for space travel? spooky!.

reply to post by Biigs

Yes we are indeed lucky to have that body floating above us,if only we can redirect our.. hate to say it greed out into space where we have an abundance of raw materials we are not going to do this because some scientist find it interesting that there maybe mold on Mars we will do this because money is to be made , I mean type one civilization is right at our finger tips.
About Mars I say carve it up and bring green house gases to it something which we are experts at doing providing there are no other life forms currently living there,it may take centuries to breath Martian air but it would be a worth while investment for our collective descendants,after all those of us with kids put away a lil something for their future do we not? although we may never even live to see them enjoy it.

reply to post by Spider879


Thing is once we have technology that can go solar system-solar system. Mar's might have already been a wasted effort by that time. Would be cool and convienent for us as a civilization to have a next door planet with an ecosystem. Thing is it might as well be a cooler(temp) version of Earth, due to it distance from the sun.

Also remember hearing that their was water on the moon, due to the U.S nuking it twice to see if their was any. Thing is it will most likely be radioactive, due to exposure to the sun, and two nukes.

Asteroids and Meteors however, those would be genuine "Gold Mines" with the abundance of floating rock in the Kuiper Belt.

reply to post by Specimen


No one ever nuked the moon, the US had plans to nuke it during the cold war as a display of power, but it never happened. We have however, crashed a probe, LCROSS, that confirmed the existence of ice on the moon when it impacted. So, I agree the water that is on the moon could be radioactive from solar rays and what not, but no nukes caused any radiation on the moon.

However, if there is a mass abundance of any kind of resource on celestial bodies, wouldn't that saturate the market? Someone might have control of things at first, but when all nations can do the same it would make, say precious metals for example, almost worthless if mass amounts were mined.

reply to post by deathlord


Meh, it makes little difference if they nuked the moon at all. I do recall seeing it on the news some time in 2010, but never payed much attention to it. Besides the water would of been dosed with radiation for as long as the moon, so it wouldn't make no difference at all.

I do agree though, the market would be over saturated, and due to increased amount of precious metals and rare gases, the value would drop immensely. 24k Gold would be as much as copper.

(An hour or two later...)

Well it turns it was actually Nasa, and didn't mention nuke, but it did say bomb. Neways, I finally found some articles.

Nasa moon Bombing...

Nasa bombs moon link 2

reply to post by deathlord

However, if there is a mass abundance of any kind of resource on celestial bodies, wouldn't that saturate the market? Someone might have control of things at first, but when all nations can do the same it would make, say precious metals for example, almost worthless if mass amounts were mined.

Yes it would fundamentally change our current economic system in the long run but I am sure like gold which is not scarce someone would find away to hoard it's distribution but it would also drive growth and industries and further explorations I envision a system based not on acquiring wealth but self improvement much like Star Trek or that Venus Project guy Jacques Fresco,for if all our needs were being met we would still have the urge to compete and out do one another.

The above is two short vids by Jacques Fresco now I don't know if we can adopt his ideas but I am attracted to his views.

Two words, er, one name...

Robert Bigelow...

Originally posted by Toxicsurf
Two words, er, one name...

Robert Bigelow...

Yes he is one of the entrepreneur pushing the envelope along with Mark Zuckerberg,Bill Gates,James Cameron,Elon Musk and others.