Moon Madness
Scientists say that strip mining the moon will reward us with cheap energy. Pat Thomas sees the dark side of their moon madness
What do you see when you look at the moon? The romantic sees an opportunity to steal a kiss and dance a little closer. An astrologer may see the symbolism of the Earth’s constant companion, the shadow to the Sun’s light, the yin to its yang. A woman might see the waxing and waning of her own physiological cycles. A biodynamic farmer might see a cue about when to plant, cultivate or harvest. A businessman may see a landscape to exploit for future profit and a scientist a novel energy source to be harvested.
Amongst all of these, it is the extraction of energy in the form of helium-3 (He-3) that seems to be attracting the greatest media interest at the moment. He-3 – an apparently ‘cleaner’ fuel for nuclear fusion reactors that is almost unavailable on Earth – is purportedly abundant in moon rocks.
As a result, more than 40 years after the first moon landing, a second race for the moon is under way and the international competition is intense.
NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration sees American astronauts back on the moon in 2020 and permanently staffing a base there by 2024. The US space agency has neither announced nor denied plans to mine He-3, but according to a 2007 article in Technology Review it has nevertheless placed advocates of mining He-3 in influential positions.
Russia, China and India are now all part of the race to get hold of the moon’s He-3. So are Germany and Japan.
Reconquering the moon, of course, is a beginning rather than an end in itself. It is a gateway for the exploitation of resources on other planets, to help us continue fuel our lifestyles here on Earth.
According to a recent report in the Ecologist, the surface of the moon is encrusted with many different kinds of high-energy particles. Many of these, including He-3, can be extracted through heating moon rock and collecting the gas.
“Millions to hundreds of millions of tonnes, I should think, is readily accessible,” says Matthew Genge, lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London, “You can strip mine the moon and you can cook out the Helium-3.”
There is probably more than a little bluster in such plans and pronouncements. The timescales of this new frontier of exploration – about 20 years – is also telling. It’s amazing how many of these promised so called techno-fixes for our planet always seem to be achievable within that time scale of about 20 years: close enough to interest investors, far enough away to drop to the bottom of the priority pile of average citizens who are just trying to get by in the here and now.
Whenever a government or scientist says something like that it usually means they haven’t got a clue when or if it might happen at all.
Short-sighted
While it is not surprising that powerful nations are looking to exploit potential resources on the moon – it is disturbingly short-sighted. All around the world we are witnessing angry protests over the convergence of crises we are facing in climate and the economy. At the heart of both of these problems is the thoughtless exploitation of our own world, and the belief that resources, be they animal, mineral or vegetable exist purely for human benefit and profit.
Most of our exploitation of the Earth has been able to advance on the premise that the damage is taking place far away, outside our usual borders and on tricksy methods of accounting for ourselves, for example by offloading our waste and our carbon debts onto developing countries and amongst people and cultures that we never have any contact with. Out of sight, out of mind.
If we feel entitled to be so careless with our own world, how much less cautious we will be with another one? What kind of stewards would we be for somewhere 384,000 km away?
The moon may well hold many mineral resources, but we still have to get there and back to make use of them.
Given that the earth’s mineral and petroleum resources are rapidly running out, that we have, according to many analysts, already passed peak oil (that is, the point when its production starts to irretrievably decline), how do these all-powerful government agencies propose to fuel the rockets which will fly to and from the moon, and the machinery that will need to function on the moon and on earth in order to exploit these resources? How much energy will it take to support, feed, shelter and keep warm, the people who will have to perhaps live on the moon and oversee operations? How much energy will it take to process these resources – and what amount and kind of waste do they generate?
Keeping wasteful lifestyles afloat
Does the moon need protection? Yes of course it does – from human stupidity which is already in evidence all around us on the Earth.
The most altruistic reasons are put forward for mining the moon – a sustainable future for all. But what is really driving this particular boy’s own adventure into space is the desire to keep our current and very wasteful lifestyles afloat. To make sure we can keep all the lights on, whether we need them or not; to keep driving our cars less than a mile to the shops; and keep filling up our homes with useless crap that we don’t need and that we end up throwing out or trading in within a year.
Unless governments – and consumers – address this outrageous waste of modern life, and the way that our entire economic system thrives on that waste, there won’t be enough moons or planets in the known universe to keep us going.
Lunar prospecting could cost as much as $20 billion over a decade. But wouldn’t that money be better used as a contribution to helping wipe out debt and to even out the gaps between the haves and have nots here on earth? In 2009 Oxfam reported that the amount of money spent on bailing out banks globally – around $8.4 trillion – could end poverty around the globe for a half a century. In the face of that $20 billion may not be much, but it’s a start.
A flawed vision
There is no indication that our financial institutions have learned anything from banking current crisis except that whenever they act irresponsibly the government (using taxpayers’ money) will be there to bail them out. The plan to mine the moon is just another type of ‘bail out’. If world governments truly cared about providing for a sustainable future they would turn their eyes earthward and invest in vibrant local (as opposed to global) economies in both the developed and especially the developing countries.
Instead of encouraging us to buy out of season ‘fair trade’ goods from countries where people are so busy feeding Western supermarkets that they can’t feed themselves, we should be funding greater self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to food, throughout the world.
The money we spend on trying to create a ‘lunar economy’, could be spent on returning the world to a solar economy – less dependent on oil and non-renewable resources and more dependent on solar and other renewable resources to help us fuel and feed ourselves. It could be spent on re-educating people in the concept of one planet living, helping them to feel valued for who they are rather than what they own and to reorder our economic goals along the lines of a steady state economy rather than one based on endless growth.
Mining the moon is seen in some political and scientific circles as visionary. But the vision is critically flawed. When deep societal change is what is really required it’s being touted in an effort to maintain business as usual and with an arrogant sense of ‘no limits’,
From a symbolic point of view our emotional and psychological relationship with the moon is an ancient and valuable thing. And so in the current flurry of scientific can-do-ism it might also be worth asking: how might we fundamentally change that relationship when we turn the moon into a huge open cast mine? What kind of damage would that do to the collective psyche?
Like all the wild places from which we draw inspiration and solace and a greater sense of our place in the vast universal scheme of things, the moon is valuable in and of itself. It feeds our spirits, inspires our stories, rules our tides and lights our darkness. It deserves our attention and our protection.
© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.
