Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
NASA may have called off plans to make a return trip to the moon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans are done exploring the lunar surface, according to a new report published in the February edition of the journal Physics World.
In that paper, science writer Richard Corfield explains that private sector companies and space agencies are looking at ways to make it back to the moon so they can tap into the 1.6 billion tons of water ice at its poles and the abundant rare-earth elements hidden beneath its surface.
The lunar landscape is attractive for possible mining activities, and the presence of the polar water ice has “more than anything else… kindled interest in mining the moon,” Corfield explained Monday in a statement, “for where there is ice, there is fuel.”
A gas station in space
Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) is one of the companies said to be developing plans to harness the reserves of water ice and to convert it into rocket propellant in the form of hydrogen and oxygen. The Texas-based firm would then market it to partners in low-Earth orbit.
Essentially, the plan is to build a “gas station in space,” SEC CEO Dale Tietz explained. The company would extract water ice by sending people and robots to mine the lunar poles, convert it to fuel, and use some of it to power their own activities. The rest of the propellant would be sold at orbital facilities for a fraction of the price of shipping fuel from Earth, they added.
“There are billions of tons of water ice on the poles of the Moon. We are going to extract it, turn it into rocket fuel and create fuel stations in Earth’s orbit,” the company said on its website. “Our fuel stations will change how we do business in space and jump-start a multi-trillion dollar industry… Much like gold opened the West, lunar water will open space like never before.”
HTP
Another privately funded company, Moon Express, is also looking to use water ice as fuel, but their plan is somewhat different. It intends to mine lunar resources to make “high-test peroxide” (HTP), which would be used to fuel its spacecraft and other interstellar operations.
“We believe it’s critical for humanity to become a multi-world species and that our sister world, the Moon, is an eighth continent holding vast resources than can help us enrich and secure our future,” the company explained on its website.
“Most of the elements that are rare on Earth are believed to have originated from space, and are largely on the surface of the Moon,” Moon Express added. “Reaching for the Moon in a new paradigm of commercial economic endeavor is key to unlocking knowledge and resources that will help propel us into our future as a space faring species.”
Diaspora to the stars (whatever that means)
With terrestrial rare-earth elements dwindling, and in light of the fact that most of those that remain have already been claimed, Corfield said that it is no surprise that companies are looking towards the moon for new sources of these essential elements, which are used in everything from smartphones and computers to car batteries.
“All interested parties agree that the Moon – one step from Earth – is the essential first toehold for humankind’s diaspora to the stars,” added Corfield, a research fellow at Oxford University and the author of Lives of the Planets: A Natural history of the Solar System and other books.
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