If you’ve studied space exploration, you know that the technologies that NASA has developed have changed the world for better in countless ways. Their efforts to push humanity out into space and onto other celestial bodies have created countless advances in technology. But instead of only sending something out, what if for the first time, we take something back?
The moon is our nearest neighbor, well within the habitable zone, and does indeed hide substantial amounts of water in impact craters at the poles. It also has underground lava tubes so large they have the potential to shield cities from solar and cosmic radiation.
So what if we could live there? What would we want to harvest and take back with us?
Helium-3 is gas that two space shuttles worth could power the entire united states for several years. That’s a lot of energy! Unfortunately the element is rare on Earth but common on the moon because of it’s lack of a magnetosphere.
It is worth noting the technology of nuclear fission is not totally ready today but will be in the coming decades. A tiny amount of nuclear waste is generated, but nothing on the scale that traditional nuclear diffusion does. It’s also extremely safe and incapable of causing a large scale disaster.
How I see it, Helium-3 from the moon will someday be the power of the future. It’s only best that we start preparing to mine it today so that we will have supplies of in the future to generate power and defeat global warming.
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Wow, I’ve never even heard of such a thing! Very interesting. It’s also interesting how a lot of people think the answer to everything comes from land, so the thought of stepping outside of our “comfort” zones is a brilliant idea.