The US owns the moon. So we should be able to do whatever we want with it...right?

Smurfy,

There is no doubt that the taxpayers would pay all the costs in this scheme and in other schemes related to "clean" energy, and the well-connected private individuals and entities would get all the benefits. Haven't you heard of "privatizing the profits and socializing the costs"? That is Bush's motto.

PDJ seems to be the most knowlegdeable on this subject. Thanks for the input! I don't have to be a scientist to understand that since we are going to reach peak oil soon, that this planet is in serious danger of being fried, and that greed rules everything. I too smell a rotting rat in this whole scheme. I also question the whole concept of building "base camps" on the moon. At taxpayor expense! When the earth gets fried, who do you think is going to be able to escape to those little moon villages? I certainly won't be able to afford a ticket!

Rebel Farmer,

I doubt the privileged few would take a chance on surviving on the moon (too many unknowns and health concerns). No, I think they are secretly building their Dr. Strangelove mine shafts. Don't you think Cheney feels most comfortable in the bowels of the earth?

Many news agencies around the world raised eyebrows and laughed when Rummy mentioned US control of space at a press conf. last year. Makes more sense to me now...
Rumsfeld ordered "space professional military education at all levels to ensure our forces have a direct understanding of how to integrate space activities into military operations."
"The mission of space control is to ensure the freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and, when directed, to deny such freedom of action to adversaries."
October 18, 2006; Washington Post
President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."
Rumsfeld: "Control space, no matter how much that ambition annoys other governments".
Rumsfeld: Forget about civilized states with sane governments. The challenge at hand is entrenched, stateless terrorism. The proper response is death from above. Or, in the Pentagon dialect, "denying sanctuary with persistent surveillance, tracking, and rapid engagement, with high-volume precision air strikes in all times and weathers, and in all terrains."
No it was not 'one giant leap for mankind'. It was a leap towards US military domination of everything. Assimilate or die.

So, everybody's chasing after a technology that "hasn't been proven to work yet"?

Sound like something else we've seen before?

What are they building in there?

"Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit,"

WTF?? I guess George Lucas was onto something.....

this is insane. another technofix, more ecological destruction.

Why Do We Fight? Because Earth's (and beyond) resources are seen as profit to be owned by the first great explorer (backed by strong arm thugs) that stakes a claim. First Come First Served! Everybody else pays dearly.

Our planet speaks quietly and if we are not listening this great power that is the common thread Einstein must of tapped into, She's going to slap us hard.

We are only concerned with what's good for mankind, ignore the need of anything non-human.

I'm perfectly happy to subsidize a one-way ticket for all those crazed corporatists hoping to "conquer the moon."

As helium-3 is non-polluting-- Just as Nukes are non-polluting. Flying back and forth to the moon defeats the purpose!

The earth was a rock before plant life began collecting energy by photosynthesis

Peaople say that conservatives are those who have the most to conserve. The richer they are, the more conservative they become and it seems, the more greedy and fearful of losing their hoard and power.

Their religious zeal helps conservatives lose the guilt for the depredations they cause. Superstition, homophobia, racism, sexism, punishment, fearmongering, warmongering, crime and other forms of authoritarian behaviour, they call "traditions", "patriotism" and "God fearing". With these handles they manipulate the poor, middle class and simply rich conservative believers of their propaganda, like lambs led to slaughter.

Nature controls the amount of resources any animal can hoard by limiting these to what the animal can personally defend, enabling diversity, competition and natural selection. Money enables the human animal to monopolize and hoard resources without limits, circumventing natural selection. That's why modern conservatives are sorry examples of human beings.

Republicans are uniformly conservative authoritarian beasts. The more beastly, the more they deny their bestial nature. We are not animals they say, because we are smarter, or have souls, or possess some other divine characteristics that separate us from beasts. But conservatives daily prove to be the followers of Mammon the proverbial biblical beast.

Republicans and Democrats are ruled by conservative's money. Yet conservatives have become freaks of nature who don't rule by strength, intelligence and information like their alpha male animal counterparts. They rule by self defeating, world destroying, unfettered greed enabled by unlimited hoarding of money-power. As opposed to their animal cousins, the dumbest and weakest rule for the most corrupt.

There is a way for the people to break free of the rule of Mammon. See: http://www.gravel2008.us/

Pastoralist killer nomads from the steppes of Central Asia 1500 years ago, called Aryans, now the hegemons of the Western Hemisphere, I address you.

You are now, immediately required to change your arrested infantile model of plunder, rape, and slaves and move on to a greater level of maturity, e.g. humans are not food, anyone who degrades life is possessed by sickness, the more evil the society the more paranoid the empire - or you will all die. We will all die eventually but if we remain at the thumb sucking violent ape level, it will happen a lot quicker and before the end, the living will envy the Grateful Dead.

Peace.

...and you don't get to go to Disneyland either...

Why can't the billions of dollars for this stupid mission be spent to bring about a solar/wind revolution instead? Honestly...I hope this is somehow a joke.

http://www.dreamingearth.net

Do the math.

According to NASA, the cost of sending 1lb of material into space is $10,000. 'Space' begins about 60 miles above the earth, so we must bear in mind that our ten grand is how much it costs to send our one-pound payload about 60 miles. It is not how much it costs to retrieve fuel from the moon; the moon is a quarter of a million miles away. To retrieve fuel from the moon would cost orders of magnitude more.

However, for arguments sake, lets stay with the cost of sending things into orbit for the sake of argument. Now, one gallon of gasoline weighs 8.66 lbs, and costs about three bucks. To send a gallon of gas into space therefore costs $86,000.

However, if the fuel on the moon contains as much calorific potential as a nuclear element such as uranium, this still doesn't represent much of a saving. Uranium prices are just over $100 for 1lb.

Mining the moon for fuel is clearly an absurd sci-fi notion.

foamweapons, what you say is true; and I really, really wish the US government would just do that. Instead, they resort to an especially outlandish version of what many people do at work; pretending to be busy when they're actually just playing computer games, except these people have the entire world in their hands, and apparently Rumsfeld is acting out some sort of star wars fantasy.

WTF!?!

We are actually going to "mine" the moon!?!

Are we going to be able to see the haulpacs from our bedroom telescopes? Where will the dirt go? Seeing as there is no gravity, once you pull the dirt out of the ground, rape it of its nutrients and want to put it back, won't it just float away? Which begs another question; will there be collapses in the mines even though there is no gravity? How much will the "working away from home allowance" be? It'd have to be astronomical (to slap a pun down) you'd think!

So many questions, so little patience for stupidity on such a grand scale. Really people, have we lost our fu**ing minds!?!

This is long, but please read it through...

I have been digging into this "He3 on the moon" stuff for the past couple years, and now conclude the whole thing is very, very fishy. It has nothing to do with an exciting, environmentally friendly energy source any more Ponzi's scheme was about fine home sites in Florida.

For starters, the whole idea of using He3 fusion doesn't make technological sense. The He3 would be used in a Deuterium-He3 (D-He3) reaction, which required much higher temperatures and pressures than the much "easier" D-D or D-Tr (Deuteriun-Tritium) reaction - themselves still a long way from being provable as a electricity-generation technology. The first proof-of concept D-Tr reactor (being built by Switzerland and France) will not be operable before 2012 - and nothing is on the drawing boards for a pure D-He3 reactor.

A good primer on fusion is here:

http://crppwww.epfl.ch/crppfusion/

The D-He3, reaction has some advantages, very low neutron-activation induced radioactive reactor components, and can potentially be used to directly generate electricity via the high-energy protons (instead of relying on a heat-steam-turbine cycle).

But look at the disavantages! You have to go to the moon (where it is still in less than part-per-million concentrations) to get it, versus deterium, which is abundant in ordinary water. A glass of water contains enough deterium to be equivalent of 200 liters of gasoline. And the technology to start the He3 reaction is much more difficult, while if D-D fusion becomed practical, the reaction breeds plenty of He3 anyway. He3 fusion would be hightly favored for future high-speed interstellar spacecraft since heavy shielding wouldn't be required, but this is the only advantage I see.

So why would anyone be promoting something that makes no technical sense except for star-trek technologies in the very-long-term, with such fervor.

So, hitting the internet, a few thing become clear:

1. Serious scientists doing working in fusion-energy research are _not_ enthusiastic about it.

2. Nearly all the enthusiasm for it comes from verious neoconservative orgainzations, or "free-market" fetishist organizations like the Cato Institute. It is very odd they would suddenly become so concerned about environmentally clean energy.

So, I let my suspicions lie there, until after reading this same news story last night, I dug a little deeper on teh internet and hit pay dirt.

It seems there is a big loophole in the outer space treaty that, athough it prohibits government ownership of lunar land and mineral rights, it allows, by omission, private claims to mineral rights. So, of course, a lot of enterprising individuals and corporations are staking mineral rights claims to the moons surface. Three US scientists alone have claimed 75 percent of the moons surface.

I presume the crony's that run Gazprom have bought up a lot of mineral rights too.

Of course, in the case of deuterium, it exists in super abundant quantities in the ocean and is very cheap to extract. But, and for a capitalist, this is a very big BUT - private individuals aren't allowed to own or trade raw water resources. Although they are trying hard at the moment to be sure.

But, thanks to that loophole, moon soil can be traded and speculated on like crazy. Even if He3 mining on the moon proves entirely unfeasable, the run-up to exploration is sure to cause a frenzy of speculation and Ponzi style schemes - think of all the people who got rich trading Florida swamp parcels. So a lot of people, many of them Bush's friends, and/or Putin's friends, stand to become multi-billionares for only a few days work.

So there you have it, a huge effort is going to be taken to produce the appearance of exploiting a resource whose use seems entirelty unnesessary even if it can be proven feasable, in order to feed their greedy frenzy of speculation and arbitrage.

And, they stil say capitalism allocates resources efficiently...

Kivals

You're probably right. At least where Cheney is concerned. But what is he going to eat? Last time I checked, sunlight is kind of necessary for life as we know it. Not much of that in a bowel.

Most of the research on Helium-3 is stated as "promising". So our government owned scientists must have solid evidence that Helium-3 is a viable energy source or a unique weapon. This somehow justifies the expense of building a mining infrastructure on the moon.

I get the strange feeling that "little boys" are managing our space program and continually jumping at any opportunity to spend billions to create a moon base. A recent favorite was to put solar panels in orbit around earth as a source of power. I guess when you are in fear of loosing funding or your job you have to come up with something, anything...

Before we build anything on the moon, shouldn't we be putting more money into subsidizing geothermal heating for homes and subsidizing the use of solar panels on the rooftops of homes and businesses? Or at least spending the billions (500 billion for rebuilding Iraq) for solar power research and development.

If we build a moon base wouldn't they initially use solar panels to power the base and mining equipment?

"Most of the research on Helium-3 is stated as "promising""

In my research, I could not find a serious paper of abstract in the fusion-energy research that calls it "promising" or the prefered alternative to pursue.

The talk of it being "promising" is coming entirely from various libertarian-right space-privatization clubs, political hacks, or Bush-appointed high-ups in NASA.

I think fusion energy is definitely worth a major development effort - but D-D fusion is the only alternative that is practical Leading me to assume some very-ulterior motives are in play in these He3 on the moon schemes.

PJD,
What the heck is "deterium"?

The use of Helium 3 in a fusion reaction can be controlled electrostatically, instead of the present magnetic containment used in the dueterium process, regerdless of temperature. We can almost do it now, all we need is the fuel. Although diffuse it all resides in the first meter of lunar soil. I would say it is less energy intensive than enriching uranium to recover. All you do is heat up the dirt and it becomes a gas. Collect a shuttles worth and fuel American reactors for a year.

I suspect the point is being missed - who gets the contracts for all this?

Even if given the appearance of being "private" you'll find plenty of taxpayer money as "subsidies" for "clean energy" - using the exact same powers you lot seem determined to hand over to the government?

Mmm.

S.

Rebel Farmer,

They can always have a few toadies, or maybe slave laborers, running the nuclear power plant on or near the surface to generate the electricity they need for artificial sunlight and whatever else they decide is necessary. As for nutrition, I suspect Cheney will stick to his diet of human blood.

Space elevator wrote:

'What the heck is "deterium"?"

It is a typo.

I assume "dueterium" is a typo too.

I'm not a physicist, but the electrostatic confinement design can also just as easily be used with D-D fusion, so the advantage of DD fusion remains. I trust that since all the serious designs are using the tokamak magnetic confinement device, the electrostatic device must have it's shortcomings.

To produce the He3 needed to support a good percentage of say the US annual electricity production, you need to scrape up tens of millions of tons of lunar soil and heat all of it up to 700C, then do all the necesary separation operations. Even though we are working at 1/6g this is going to take a whole lot of equipment and energy which all has to be launched to the moon, compared to just using earthbound sources like D-Tr or DD fusion.

Like I wrote, it is all just a Ponzi scheme.

Opium wars..
Petroleum wars...
Helium-3 wars...

GASOLINE BOYCOTT MAY 15

Sounds a lot like "Un-Obtanium"... from that silly movie 'The Core.'

Most ridiculous thing I've read in a while. Using common sense, it's pretty obvious that transporting any resource from outer-space hundreds of thousands of miles is not worth the effort.

Wind-power could power the entire U.S. Studies have shown that offshore wind-farms could power the entire East-Coast, and North and South Dakota alone could power half the continental U.S. Combined with other areas we'd have a 100% of our power from wind. And for good measure, a government law that requires a solar panel on every new home (size dependent on sq ft of the new home) could easily supplement the fluctuations of wind-power... and all that extra energy could also power the new electric cars everyone is buying because it would be 10 times cheaper for electricity than gas to drive the same distance... A clean energy future would be easy for the U.S., if only we spent the amount of money we spend on Iraq, instead on renewable energy.

I think they talk about these ridiculous moon-energy schemes because they want people to think that Hydrocarbon fuel is the only "realistic" solution. They want us to believe we are so desperate for a new energy source, people are planning to extract resources from the moon. It's the best explanation I can come up with as why they're putting on this charade... it's pretty strange.

Anybody remember H.G. Wells story the Time Machine and the resulting movies. The most recent remake of the film was in 2002, here is the link to a clip on you tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASsZKqtzIDI

While I would concur with PDB and others who state that this is all nothing more than an elaborate hoax perpetuated to line the pockets of futures traders and other greedy bastards, the idea of mining the moon scares the hell out of me. Global warming is bad, but what would happen to earth if moon mining lead to its destruction.

Stop the insanity!

Hahaha, this capitalist system is killing us all, when will people wake up, unite and fight the capitalist system?

Yes, indeed, this could be something like the South Seas bubble for the commodities markets.

Dollar for dollar, pound for pound, though, it would make He^3 the most expensive fuel ever.

I suspect, however, that there's more to this than is readily apparent. Sure, there's a potential profit motive in this, but, the very same very large missiles capable of lifting the payloads necessary to build a moon base would also do quite nicely to lift the very large items--such as the so-called Rods from God--necessary to implement the DoD's Full Spectrum 2020 program.

It's a neat way to hide those development costs in NASA's budget....

Beam me up Scotty........There's no intelligent life here....

This is Halliburton doing a Homer Simpson impression:

MMMMMMMMM Helium.

"The plot ... enable[s] the US to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out".

The thick (i.e. GWB) plottens...

GWB wants to "mine" the moon:
"All through the day - I, me, mine..."
(The Beatles)

OK, I think I get this idea, GWB must hae some bastard son some place so let us call him GWBII. Fast forwad to the year 2028, headlines on some chip in our heads will read "Gov GWBII of our 51st state, The Moon, has annouced he is running for Prez of the universe" May our pigs fly and be called the Pew Angels.
Bill B

Goodbye Moon... and we are sorry...

I'm confused, we traveled to the moon around 1969 or so, and haven't been back since. It's been a few decades, so if we truly have the capability to land on the moon, why haven't we taken a few more trips. I'd think it would be easier now with all the technological advances, wouldn't it? The point of who owns the moon may be moot, if no one can actually get to it.

Bush just wants the moon as some form of military penal colony, a lunar Gitmo or Abu Ghraib to torture "unlawful" combatants without worrying about prying eyes!! Hey maybe he'll use them as moon miners!!! :)

Now wait a minute! Aren't there people who said we haven't ever gone to the moon? That it was all a ruse? That we can't get past the radiation belt surrounding the earth?

I used to be paranoid and skeptical but now I'm just confused. Let's see.... the blue pill or the red pill! ;)

It's all in vain, the energy to get there, mine, and transport it back just isn't there. Unless we develop a different type of eco-friendly rocket engine, industrial civilization will crumble long before we are in a position to make this a reality.

actaully heliem 3 is a very good choice, this was know back in the 70's we should have been there mining it before now, if it was not for that ignorant Reagan, we would have been, he was too busy helping George Sr get dope from South America with the contras
soon revenge will be at hand for what they did to Salvadorans, Nicaraguans etc.

NOT TO WORRY

tHE RUSSIANS CREATED SPACE TRAVEL AND STILL CONTROL SAME.

The Moon is a slingshot used to send spacecraft into deep space. He who controls the moon controls space travel.

What does Star Trek say?

The anti-scientist, Young George, is trying to show the world that he is on top of this global warming issue. This information correlates nicely with the discovery of a "nearby" possibly "habitable" planet outside of our solar system. The message is, "Don't conserve. Keep doing what you're doing. Technology will overcome all of our energy problems. Let's send a man to Mars. The US is still great under my leadership." More signs of his delusional, scary mind.

This is so typical! The human race is kicking its tribal chaos out into the Cosmos to go right on fighting for national and racial domination of treasure wherever it is found, on the Earth's Moon, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and onward and outward searching for other good planets to conquer and devour, jst like a malignant cancer!

How strange this is happening despite the explosion of information around the World that would, presumably, inform the people of a happier way of living in peace and balance with the Earth! Apparently, the lust for conquest and rape is ingrained in the human mind, or so it would seem from the long record of destructive human behavior that continues today and every day wherever human beings congregate! Go to any city on Earth and somebody is being attacked, raped, robbed and killed. So, the Moon is good for nothing but mining minerals, next comes Mars, perhaps Venus and Jupiter as technology invents new ways to exploit and ravage in faraway places. "DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL !!!!" said the the returning astronaut when he discovered what his people had done to the Earth. But that is not enough. Our racial cancer must devour the Cosmic body! BAAARRRFFF!!!!

This is just another example of the Bush Administration's arrogant unilateralism. Building a base on the moon is a difficult and expensive project. It much more likely to succeed if Russia is brought in as a partner than if the US goes it alone, or cooperates only with the Europeans and Japanese. Russian participation has proven essential to the International Space Station. About half the modules that comprise the current station are Russian built. While the US space shuttle has floundered, cheap reliable Russian Soyuz spacecraft make it possible to transport crews to the station, and Russian progress spacecraft keep it stocked with supplies. It remains to be seen whether mining Helium 3 on the moon will prove feasible. The effort is certainly more likely to succeed if the nations of the world work together, sharing in the costs and potential benefits, than if they act like squabbling children.

"Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit.."

Looks like we all have the answer to that anticipation.

Helium-3? ....Hot air maybe.

Think out of the box........

Prolly just another site for a" missile defense" (offense) system.

Could we torture people on the moon to bypass any international laws that may be enforced or be passed?

A moon based prison using them for labor to mine.

A moon based reform school...only people that take Jesus Christ as their savior are allowed to come back to Earth.

An escape vehicle- long chain carbon nonotube fabric is draped over areas of the moon, saturated with high temp epoxy. Filtered air is pumped from Earth to fill these areas, artificial lights are built, the moon is nudged out of Earths orbit into the universe leaving behind um, sinners, a toxic atmosphere and a dead tideless putrid Ocean.

Gold! Platinum! Silver! it wouldn't be the first time taxpayers built infrastructure for private corporations to profit off of. GHW Bush has invested in a company that is destroying a glacier(and drinking water) in South America to get to the Gold underneath it.

The new world order's White House, based on the moon. A "terrorist" attack kicks in the shadow government on Earth, elections are canceled, government closes down, commerce comes to a halt, no petro fuels, anarchy takes over, people starving. Bio engineered organisms are dropped from Air Force 1 as it heads to the moon with Shrub, dead eye, and company. They wait out the "cleansing" for a year or more and are administered inoculations before their return trip back to Earth. A Christ centered international government is born.

The Club Moon - no laws...prostitutes, drugs, rape, sex slaves, torture, murder. What is your pleasure? You can buy anything there, if you can afford it.

Anything is possible, even $1.50 bottled water. There was a time where that was thought impossible.

conquer the moon! it's been holding out on cheese and isotopes for centuries. AND I THINK that once we run out of hydrocarbons here we won't have much of a planet to play on by then. and that's soon. race to the moon and conquer. I mean, our flag is supposedly up there already; don't we get dibs?