Russia is planning to mine a rare fuel on the moon by 2020 with a permanent base and a heavy-cargo transport link, a Russian space official said Wednesday.

"We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope Helium-3," Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Energia space corporation, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying at an academic conference.

The International Space Station (ISS) would play a key role in the project and a regular transport relay to the moon would be established with the help of the planned Clipper spaceship and the Parom, a space capsule intended to tug heavy cargo containers around space, Sevastyanov said.

Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope of helium that can be used in nuclear fusion.

Rare on earth but plentiful on the moon, it is seen by some experts as an ideal fuel because it is powerful, non-polluting and generates almost no radioactive by-product.

Our future new kind of fuel that might replace to plutonium or uranium. That would be a future very feasible busineess.

Rodolfo

So you have to build a mining industry and infrastructure on the Moon, then fly the stuff back to Earth on a regular basis and finally try to actually build a reactor that works on it. After spending a kazillionbillion dollars you have to compete on the open energy market against energy sources like hydro, solar and God knows what for cheap stuff they have invented by then. This means it will take 13 billion years for your investors before they start making any profit out of this. Now, you go and write a business plan based on this and try to raise some funding.

(Sorry if it sounds a bit harsh, but its a lot of crap. Rather typical for manned spaceflight plans these days, unfortunately.)

I was just talking about this in my first year space exploration course this morning. I pointed out there are two kinds of plan.

Imagine you want to build a garage beside your house. One kind of plan is 'I think I'll build a garage... maybe next year.' The other is the kind where you have architect's drawings, planning permission approved by the city, and a contractor booked.

This is the first kind of plan. This happens a lot in space news, like China sending people to the moon, for instance.

Phil

Why bring it back to Earth? Use the resources to start a space infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization

Eventually there will be more people in space than on Earth.

Your views aren't harsh but useful so I can see the others business forces that will compete against the Moon's mineral: Helium as an alternative energy source. The inherent advantage of Helium is of its cleaness (no polution to atmosphere and ground which are of main concern), high energy per mass and abundant.

About the hydro power has their limitations and it is only good for some geographic localizations. I have no idea about the amount of helium would be equivalent to Plutonium or uranium to generate the same energy. As everybody knows that these provides lots of energy for a small quantity comparing to the other sources such as coal or petroleum.

Fusion power could solve many of the problems of fission power (the technology mentioned above) but, despite fusion research having started in the 1950s, no commercial fusion reactor is expected before 2050 in the international ITER project. Other fusion technologies like inertial confinement fusion may have a different timetable. Many technical problems remain unsolved. Proposed fusion reactors commonly use deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, as fuel and in most current designs also lithium. Assuming a fusion energy output equal to the current global output and that this does not increase in the future, then the known current lithium reserves would last 3000 years, lithium from sea water would last 60 million years, and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium from sea water would have fuel for 150 billion years


Now I see that tne above news would be in doubt since it might be no cheaper (build moon mining, bring Helium from moon, and build a fusion plant) than the alternative energy sources. It will still be kept as a dream.

Rodolfo

There is another way of looking at this. Obviously the Helium-3 story does have a strong promise in it. Superficially it makes a lot of sense. But if you think about it for a few minutes (and read Robert Zubrin's analysis) it quickly falls apart. Now, a leading figure in space exploration, somebody who perfectly knows what he's talking about, is heralding this Helium-3 story as the main selling point of going to the Moon. He is not mad or a fool, he is a businessman trying to make money by selling space projects. However, he is doing that by telling us LIES. You see what I mean? If this is the best they can come up with, I don't think we will see anybody walking on the Moon anytime soon.

ps. thanks for not taking my previous posting too personal!

The depressing fact is that the space industry is an absolute Field Of Dreams for scam artists -- and, unfortunately, the Russian government and business establishment seem to be composed ENTIRELY of scam artists.

Using the ISS in this...does that mean America will "have to" assist Russia in its mining plans? Or will this nation finally have the brains to let the Russians buy the hulking piece of junk called "the ISS"? Not sure if Russia has the $$$ to purchase our portion, but they've asked to buy complete ownership of the ISS. I say let's sell it, it's their headache, let's get out of LEO and onto bigger, better things.

Instead of looking back 4 decades ago...(which is growing increasingly pathetic).

As for their Kliper ship (or Clipper...why 2 spellings?), I must admit it's cute.

Canopus asks,

"As for their Kliper ship (or Clipper...why 2 spellings?)...."

Kliper is the Russian name written in the Roman alphabet. Clipper is a translation of it.

Phil

Helium 3? What happened to deuterium here on Earth, which we can get from processing plentiful seawater? You get more energy anyway from fusing lighter elements.

I'm looking forward to seeing something useful come from this project. I hope I live to see viable fusion reactors. I am wary though that the existence of a plentiful energy source like fusion generators will cause us to forget about constructing energy-efficient devices. I believe in efficiency even when there is a perceived surplus of a good.

That is true but it is very very complicated and expensive to manage and control due to its very huge energy output.

Rodolfo

More details about Moon mining:

Moonscam: Russians try to sell the Moon for foreign cash

Interesting themes from the article:

1) Hellium has incredible source energy for kilogram unit:

Sevastianov, the recently-appointed head of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation (the firm that builds and operates all of Russia’s human space vehicles), claimed that one ton of helium-3 could produce as much energy as 14 million tons of oil. “Ten tons of helium-3 would be enough to meet the yearly energy needs of Russia,” he added. “There are practically no reserves of helium on the Earth. On the Moon, there are between 1 million and 500 million tons, according to various estimates,” he said, enough for the entire planet’s energy needs for a thousand years.

2) But, the fusion energy for electrical power is still far:

The story continued with commendable caution: “Not everyone is sold on the promise of helium-3: A workable fusion reactor is still decades away, and researchers say that the technology for using helium-3 is more difficult than the technology for other potential fusion fuels that would be more abundant on Earth.

3) The idea is very old and it is from Western

The concept of mining helium-3 from lunar dirt is not original with Russia, and has been discussed at length in the Western space literature. This is underscored by an embarrassing slip-up: not even the artwork released in Russia to show “a typical Moon base” is original. It too has been ripped off from Western sources, often apparently in violation of international copyright laws.

4) However, it says that mining Hellium in Moon is much easier and cheaper:

“It is much easier to develop resources on the Moon than to produce oil on the Earth,” Galimov continued. Space geologist Erik Galimov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, added that immediate steps must be taken to explore potential mining sites. “We should start geological survey, make maps of blocs exposed to the Sun, and design experimental installations if we want to start the production of helium-3 on the Moon in 15–20 years,” he said.

“There is nothing difficult from the engineer’s point of view in the production of helium-3,” he continued. “It is only a matter of investments.”

He calculates that an area of 10–15 square kilometers with the depth of three meters will be enough for producing one ton of helium-3. Engineers will have to remove and purify three meters of sand, enrich helium-3, and liquidify it for the delivery to the Earth.

Rodolfo

If Oberg knows that the Russian picture is "ripped off" then he ought to be able to identify the source. (He doesn't.) If he doesn't know what the source is, then he has no basis for accusing the Russians of ripping it off. Either he's sloppy, or he's making unsupportable accusations -- I don't know which.

I have read a good deal of Oberg's stuff, and he has done some good work in putting together the history of the space program, but he clearly hates the Russians with a virulent passion (for, I gather, political reasons) and views anything they do with a jaundiced eye. Many of his criticisms are doubtless spot on, and certainly the Helium-3 proposal sounds like something that is, at best, decades ahead of its time; but Oberg has a tendency to get very cranky-sounding on subjects he's passionate about, and this makes it harder to take him as seriously as he'd like.

One Moon base concept shown on the Komsomolskaya Pravda website on January 27 (http://www.kp.ru/upimg/photo/57527.jpg) was carefully labeled in Russian, showing the helium-3 refinery and the storage and transshipment equipment. But within three hours space observer Rusty Barton had posted on an Internet space policy newsgroup the URL of the original artwork by Roger Arno (http://www.challenger.org/pacct/Images/LunarBase-fs.jpg), with the notice: “copyright 1996-97, California Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited.”

A 22-year veteran of prospecting and mining on Earth has some no-nonsense advice for lunar explorers.

FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/22....htm?list161084

Sudbury To Host Planetary And Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium

by Staff Writers

Sudbury, Canada (SPX) Jun 06, 2006

Sudbury is home to the world's largest concentration of mining technology expertise and area companies have been mining the 1.87-billion-year-old impact crater for more than 100 years. At first glance it may be difficult to see what connection that has to the space industry, and why we should care; a closer look reveals not only a strong link, but a compelling economic reason.

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Sudbur..._Symposium.html

That I will believe when I see it. (For that matter, I will believe this "Juna-Glob" probe and its huge flock of penetrators when I see it, too.)

The Lunar He-3 idea is just plain goofy. There is always a mad rush when NASA or ESA pour money into the feeding trough. If the Russians want to rip people off, they will have to elbow a lot of Westerners out of the way.

To quote a friend of mine in the aerospace industry (yes, I do have one friend in the aerospace industry): "The commercialization of space is a Field of Dreams for scam artists." Their philosophy seems to be, "If you propose it, they will come and get swindled."

Helium3 on the Moon is extremely diluted into a huge layer of regolith (even admitting that it is not present only into the near surface when solar wind brings it continuously, and not depleted from ages into the deeper layers). Mining it would require to dig and heat a layer of regolithe several kms thick all across the Moon surface, an enterprise several orders of magnitude beyond anything else undertaken on Earth.

Then this He3 would have to be taken back to Earth, at a very high energy cost.

Before this, we would have to land on the Moon millions of trucks, cranes, excavators, and complete factories. The smallest truck is heavier than a LEM... so we would have to land on the Moon thousands, if not millions of Apollo-like missions.

And all this without local source of energy, food, air, water.

Mining the Moon to bring even a sample of He3 is simply millions times larger than what we know to do, both technically and economically. This fusion energy would cost thousand more money and energy that it would produce.

And, last but not least, the face of the Moon would be changed forever. And no way to hide it...


That a manager of a large space corp could enven simply envision such a thing shows us that this space corp is managed by politicians or bureaucrats, not by scientists or technicians, and even not by businessmen.