Peter1469
07-20-2017, 09:28 AM
The Battle for the Moon Begins (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/the-battle-for-the-moon-begins)
Great news! Competition drives us forward.
But as important as securing symbols of that first foray to a celestial body may be, the fight is a small illustration of the potential exploitation to come. As more nations and companies plan missions to the moon, the real fear isn’t of some spacefaring Indiana Jones so much as the impacts of numerous lunar landings or, say, a massive mining operation.
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Roughly 239,000 miles away, the moon is a large and relatively close target, rich with helium and other resources (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/nightsky/12178122/night-sky-march-2016-china-space-mission.html). At least five nations are actively planning to explore it with manned missions, and China is eager to assess the potential in mining helium-3, a nonradioactive isotope for nuclear fuel that is rare on earth but abundant in the lunar crust.
Great news! Competition drives us forward.
But as important as securing symbols of that first foray to a celestial body may be, the fight is a small illustration of the potential exploitation to come. As more nations and companies plan missions to the moon, the real fear isn’t of some spacefaring Indiana Jones so much as the impacts of numerous lunar landings or, say, a massive mining operation.
***
Roughly 239,000 miles away, the moon is a large and relatively close target, rich with helium and other resources (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/nightsky/12178122/night-sky-march-2016-china-space-mission.html). At least five nations are actively planning to explore it with manned missions, and China is eager to assess the potential in mining helium-3, a nonradioactive isotope for nuclear fuel that is rare on earth but abundant in the lunar crust.