25 Things You Need to Know About the Future by Christopher Barnatt

Author:Christopher Barnatt [Barnatt, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780335094
Publisher: Constable & Robinson

Figure 14.2: Nuclear fusion with helium-3

In 1994, a private venture called the Artemis Project was established with the goal of establishing a private Moon base. Backed by an increasing number of organizations, this growing initiative has estimated that about 25 tonnes of helium-3 could power the whole of the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has a potential economic value in the order of several billion dollars per tonne. In turn this makes helium-3 the only lunar deposit that may prove economic to mine and return to the Earth with current and near-future space technology.

Only a few years ago mining lunar helium-3 was being seriously considered by many nations. For example, in 2006 Nikolai Sevastyanov – then head of the Russian space corporation Energia – reported that Russia was 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. Before President Obama cancelled the Constellation Programme (which was intended to return Americans to the Moon) in 2010, NASA had also announced its intention to establish a permanent base on one of the Moon’s poles by 2024. The potential of helium-3 mining had also been signalled as one of NASA’s reasons for returning to the Moon and planning such a base. Back in 2005, China also had plans to put a man on the Moon by 2017. One of the stated aims of this mission was to measure the thickness of the lunar soil and the amount of helium-3 present.

Following the financial crash of 2008, all of the aforementioned plans to return humans to the Moon have fallen by the wayside. However, unmanned lunar missions have continued to be launched by the United States, India and China. Google is even sponsoring a competition called the Google Lunar X Prize. This is intended to promote unmanned lunar exploration, and will award $30 million to the first private team to land a robot on the lunar surface, drive it at least 500 metres, and return video images to the Earth.

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