Moon / Asteroid Mining

[searcher]

• NASA is going back to the moon, and this time it means business.
• Private companies are helping it build lunar transport, GPS, Wi-Fi, and more.
• This new market, which is worth over $100 billion, could be game-changing for humanity.

The moon is open for business, and entrepreneurs are racing to make billions

As NASA aims to stay on the moon, private firms are racing to be the first to go where no company has gone before.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[pmbug]

Browser clicks are what you take
with Wi-Fi on the moon
I hope my fingers don't break
with Wi-Fi on the moon
We could browse forever
with Wi-Fi on the moon
We could be together
Videoconferencing with Wi-Fi on the moon
...

 

[Casey Jones]

Let's see. We can't drive our cars because of Glow Bull Warming...but we're gonna expend Fossil Fuels, and generate all that CARBON, hauling minerals off the MOON?

How do people become Woke? Really strong dope?

 

[searcher]

This article is from March 2019.

Mining the moon ready to lift off by 2025​

European scientists have announced plans to start mining the moon as early as 2025, though what they’ll be extracting is neither gold nor diamonds, but waste-free nuclear energy thought to be worth trillions of dollars.

The goal is to place a lander on the lunar surface to mine and process regolith for water, oxygen, metals and an isotope called helium-3, which may prove useful for fueling future fusion reactors.


Regolith, Universe Today reported, is a dust-like material that covers the lunar surface and is the result of billions of years of meteor and comet impacts. If anyone ever lives on the moon, they could use the regolith to build habitats for a base.

Read the rest:

https://www.mining.com/mining-moon-ready-lift-off-2025/#:~:text=European%20scientists%20have%20announced%20plans%20to%20start%20mining,energy%20thought%20to%20be%20worth%20trillions%20of%20dollars.

 

[searcher]

Fast forward to June 2023. May have to register to read, it's free.

BRISBANE, June 28 (Reuters) - NASA is looking to develop resources on the moon that initially include oxygen and water, and eventually may expand to iron and rare earths, and has already taken steps toward excavating moon soil in 2032, a scientist said on Wednesday.

The U.S. space agency plans to return Americans to the moon as part of its Artemis mission, including the first woman and person of colour by 2025, and to learn from the mission to facilitate a trip to Mars.

NASA sees moon lunar mining trial within the next decade

NASA is looking to develop resources on the moon that initially include oxygen and water, and eventually may expand to iron and rare earths, and has already taken steps toward excavating moon soil in 2032, a scientist said on Wednesday.

www.reuters.com

 

[searcher]

August 2023.

MOSCOW, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The race to explore and develop the moon's resources has begun and Russia must remain a player despite the failure of its first lunar mission in 47 years, the head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos said on Monday.

Russia's Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and crashed into the moon on Saturday after a problem preparing for pre-landing orbit, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space programme.

Race for moon resources has begun, says Russia's space chief after failed lunar mission

The race to explore and develop the moon's resources has begun and Russia must remain a player despite the failure of its first lunar mission in 47 years, the head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos said on Monday.

www.reuters.com

 

[pmbug]

...
A rover, named Pragyan, or wisdom, is set to analyze the chemical makeup of the moon’s surface and search for water over the course of one lunar day, which is equivalent to 14 days on Earth.

The timing of the successful landing - in the middle of the BRICS Summit, and just days after Russia's epic fail - is not lost of most as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "This is an unprecedented moment."
...

India Becomes First To Land Near Moon's South Pole, After Russia Crash | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

I wasn't aware that they had even launched a rocket at the moon.

 

[nickndfl]

Just think of the miles points you will get with one trip?

 

[searcher]

fwiw...........dyodd

India, China & Russia Confirmed Real Reason They Are Racing To Moons South Pole​

Sep 23, 2023


9:54

Chandrayaan-3 and its Vikram Lander have dominated headlines this month after a successful moon mission and its continued exploration. But Russia, China, Japan, and the US are also racing to land on the surface of the moon. After over 50 years since NASA landed on the moon, why all of a sudden do the world's emerging and established superpowers want to go back at the same time. Today we explain the reason why.

 

[searcher]

NASA set to launch spacecraft to explore metal-rich asteroid Psyche

NASA was due on Friday to launch a spacecraft from Florida on its way to Psyche, a distant, metal-rich asteroid that is the solar system's largest-known metallic object and is thought to be the remnant core of an ancient protoplanet.

www.reuters.com

 

[searcher]

From the link:

EVERYONE’S INTO ASTEROIDS these days. Space agencies in Japan and the United States recently sent spacecraft to investigate, nudge, or bring back samples from these hurtling space rocks, and after a rocky start, the space mining industry is once again on the ascent. Companies like AstroForge, Trans Astronautica Corporation, and Karman+ are preparing to test their tech in space before venturing toward asteroids themselves.

It’s getting serious enough that economists published a series of papers on October 16 considering the growth of economic activity in space. For instance, a study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines considers the potential—and challenges—for a fledgling industry that might reach a significant scale in the next several decades, driven by the demand for critical metals used in electronics, solar and wind power, and electric car components, particularly batteries. While other companies are exploring the controversial idea of scooping cobalt, nickel, and platinum from the seafloor, some asteroids could harbor the same minerals in abundance—and have no wildlife that could be harmed during their extraction.

Things Are Looking Up for Asteroid Mining

Asteroids are rich with the metals used in clean energy technologies. As demand soars, advocates argue that mining them in space might be better than mining them on Earth.

www.wired.com

 

[searcher]

Space Mining’s Best Prospect Is VC Money, Not Asteroid Gold​

Despite entrepreneurs’ hopes, the technical challenges and huge costs mean no one will be retrieving ore from the heavens anytime soon.

A small slice of Piguem Nonralta sits on Matt Gialich’s desk. The metallic ball, roughly the size of a doughnut hole, was discovered in Argentina in 1576 when Spanish colonizers went searching for iron ore and stumbled on the scattered remnants of a 4,000-year-old meteor shower. Piguem Nonralta, the name the Indigenous population gave to the asteroid craters, roughly translates to “field of heaven.” Gialich, the 37-year-old entrepreneur at the helm of a startup seeking to mine asteroids, keeps the ancient nugget at his office in Pasadena, California, as a reminder of his company’s celestial ambitions.

“These are very, very lucrative sources of ore,” Gialich says, holding the orbital tchotchke to eye level. The meteors contain iron and traces of elements such as iridium, one of the rarest minerals in the Earth’s crust. His company, AstroForge Inc., is among several startups that have studied the metallic composition of fallen asteroids and now want to mine them in outer space.

The idea isn’t new. Asteroid mining companies have tried for decades to harvest metals while attracting heaps of cash from big-name investors such as Titanic filmmaker James Cameron and Google’s Larry Page. So far, nobody has succeeded. Most space miners have either gone bust or sold out to bigger companies. Planetary Resources, a buzzy startup that attracted more than $50 million in financing to extract metals and water from nearby asteroids, crashed and burned after about a decade in operation, and was eventually acquired by a blockchain company in 2018.

More:

Space Mining’s Best Prospect Is VC Money, Not Asteroid Gold

Despite entrepreneurs’ hopes, the technical challenges and huge costs mean no one will be retrieving ore from the heavens anytime soon.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[Voodoo]

That's a good way to piss off the locals. How'd you get jurisdiction or mining rights?

 

[searcher]

Moon’s resources could be ‘destroyed by thoughtless exploitation’, Nasa warned

Astronomers say launch of dozens of lunar probes could jeopardise research and valuable resources such as sea ice in craters

www.theguardian.com

 

[pmbug]

That's a good way to piss off the locals. How'd you get jurisdiction or mining rights?

 

[searcher]

IN APRIL 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched to space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. While the mission, courtesy of a company called AstroForge, ran into problems, it’s part of a new wave of would-be asteroid miners hoping to cash in on cosmic resources.

Potential applications of space-mined material abound: Asteroids contain metals like platinum and cobalt, which are used in electronics and electric vehicle batteries, respectively. Although there’s plenty of these materials on Earth, they can be more concentrated on asteroids than mountainsides, making them easier to scrape out. And scraping in space, advocates say, could cut down on the damaging impacts that mining has on this planet. Space-resource advocates also want to explore the potential of other substances. What if space ice could be used for spacecraft and rocket propellant? Space dirt for housing structures for astronauts and radiation shielding?

Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

A lot of the attention has focused on the moon, since nations plan to set up outposts there and will need supplies. NASA, for instance, has ambitions to build astronaut base camps within the next decade. China, meanwhile, hopes to found an international lunar research station.

In the Race for Space Metals, Companies Hope to Cash In | naked capitalism

Mining asteroids could, in theory, reduce the burden on Earth’s resources. What could go wrong?

www.nakedcapitalism.com

 

[foolsgold]

The human race needs to get beyond the belief that NASA never made it to the Moon and the Earth is flat.

 

[searcher]

Related

Mercury could have an 11-mile underground layer of diamonds, researchers say​

A layer of diamonds up to 18 kilometers (11 miles) thick could be tucked below the surface of Mercury, the solar system’s smallest planet and the closest to the sun, according to new research.

The diamonds might have formed soon after Mercury itself coalesced into a planet about 4.5 billion years ago from a swirling cloud of dust and gas, in the crucible of a high-pressure, high-temperature environment. At this time, the fledgling planet is believed to have had a crust of graphite, floating over a deep magma ocean.

A team of researchers recreated that searing environment in an experiment, with a machine called an anvil press that’s normally used to study how materials behave under extreme pressure but also for the production of synthetic diamonds.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/science/mercury-diamond-underground-layer/index.html