[Music]
hello and welcome to technically speaking where scientists and Engineers come together to chat about a common interest share knowledge and satisfy some curiosity I'm Ellie and I'm joined by Jasmin to talk about mining on the moon yeah mining on the moon so Jasmin this was your idea initially how come you came across this idea yeah so I was at a conference and they were running a workshop and I can't remember what the discussion we were talking about but someone in the group I was in mentioned
mining on the moon and I thought that sounds really cool and then a few months later I heard about mining on the moon in another podcast cuz it was in the news at the time yeah it's an interesting concept I mean why not the Moon is basically chemically the same or even not chemically the same but like it's very similar to the Earth in that the moon came from the earth yes that's interesting that's a fair point um so this is going to be a little bit different um we're going to
do this episode a bit like Dragon's Den or Shark Tank if you're in America and Jasmine is going to be the pitcher and she's going to convince me the dragon that mining on the moon is a good idea so we're going to talk pros and cons of mining on the moon so I think we better start as to why we even have this idea in the first place yeah so mining on the moon so so the moon basically has the same elements and materials that are on Earth because millions and billions of years ago the
moon was basically came from the earth uh so there's lots of different Metals materials that are on the moon that could be very valuable specifically for like Technologies so there's three particular things that people are interested specifically from getting from the Moon one of the things is helium 3 it's a isotope of helium that's not naturally occurring on Earth because the Earth has a nice ozone layer that protects us from solar radiation whereas the moon doesn't
have this so it's been constantly exposed for billions and billions of years so it has a lot more helium 3 than we do on Earth it's not naturally occurring we we get it from nuclear reactors oh so the only way to scale up production of helium 3 on Earth would basically be to have more nuclear reactors which could happen but if you can yeah which could happen but why would you need that if you can mine it from the moon yeah uh yeah a few were concerns about nuclear Fifer for example uh the
other two materials that people are interested in getting from the moon are rare earth metals so like scan Scandium nutrium these types of metals that are used in electronics like smartphones because they have very specific properties I'm not going to go into more details on those because there was a previous issue not issue previous episode that we did that talked about different Mater materials that get used in Technologies um but yeah lots of um Rous rare earth metals could be very valuable
and the other thing is water so yeah in 2020 data from NASA's Sophia Mission confirmed the existence of water on the lunar surface the water molecules they're embedded uh to grains of lunar dust and okay so it's not like a big stream no there's no like actual running water or like a big lake or anything like that on the moon no there is um water in dust okay that sounds complicated but I'm willing to bear with it yeah yeah okay so we could mine helium 3 which we can't get unless we
get it from nuclear reactors yep we could get these rare precious earth metals which presumably we can also get from Earth and are currently getting from a yeah but there's issues in where they're located and also they're pretty rare cuz they're called rare earth metals for a reason absolutely uh but they are presumably more abundant on the moon uh we're not entirely sure about whether not the more abundant on the Moon versus on Earth uh just basic just based on size
probably there's more on Earth it's just that we've probably extracted a good fair amount of our existing Rare Earth metal stock so and we're running out because we're not good at recycling electronics so we need to get it from the moon need to get it from the moon and then presumably also in theory we could extract the water molecules from lunar dust and then get water from the Moon yeah we can because from our previous episode which was about forab chemicals um basically nearly all the
water on the earth is contaminated with chemicals so if you me if we need like pure water that's not contaminated we can get it from the moon we can get it from the moon interesting okay you you've picked my interest I'm intrigued um but I am imagining that this is not going to be easy no So currently um there is nothing on the moon there might be some like junk Left Behind from the one mission where humans landed on the moon and I don't think there's anything else
that's been left on the moon all the other Rovers they B they just like they land and if they're successful they'll take some measurements and then they go back to the earth I think May or maybe they're they still there still there okay I think they leave what I'm not 100% sure for every single one but I think a lot of little if there were robers and robots I think probably they're still there okay and also we did I think we did four or five trips to the Moon in like the
60s um so there is some like paraphernalia left over from when people went to the moon yeah including a bag of Neil Armstrong's poop so yeah maybe I could flog that to the highest bidder yeah I'm sure there's like some space ftic who'd probably pay lots of money for it okay regardless of perhaps leftover bits and pieces given that there is no infrastructure this is presumably going to be one of the biggest costs in mining from the Moon is going to be some sort
of I don't know plant or rig or industry sized building to uh get get the resources going yeah so to get mining on the moon to work you need to actually build mining infrastructure so you need to get all the equipment to the lunar surface so everything you need to drill and take samples to establish where you want to be digging into to extract whatever you you're trying to extract then you need to like scale it all up so that you can extract large amounts but
then you also need something that will then transport it back to Earth or maybe like some processing stuff if you want to do processing on the moon rather than on the Earth but you also need people potentially you might need people living on the moon mining usually involves a lot of people so you might need actual miners on the moon although we could use robots I was just going to ask you that do you think that would be possible to do it solely um remotely controll I
guess from Earth and then presumably that would be cheaper right it's got to be cheaper sending a lot of robots up there than it has sending people yeah potentially if we can develop a robot that could do all the things that we would need a human to do but yes regardless of whether or not we use robots or humans to do the actual mining uh it's good be expensive it's going to cost minimum billions potentially quadrillions of US Dollars Euros pounds whatever currency you want
to use it's going to cost a lot of money yeah cuz we were saying before about the cost of going into space for like we just watched um the SpaceX Mission with the uh billionaires that open the hatch and had a little civilian space walk walk for the first time like that is an expensive process just to do that so without any sort of you know physical Gathering of resources so yeah it's definitely going to have a huge out overhead cost in the first place yeah yeah definitely but if you could
successfully extract all these resources from the Moon then you could make billions to quadrillions in money because the material specifically the helium and the rare earth metals they're really valuable so per kilogram or gram they're worth hundreds to thousands of dollars so you could potentially make lots of money if you could get mining on the moon to work and presumably someone has to be the first right so maybe there's something to be said for the huge outlay of costs in the beginning to
set up the infrastructure set up the people that live there or spend a lot of time there to set up the robots and then you could start raking in the reward once you're generating product yeah for sure you definitely like it could also be a way of like there's no way of saying it without seeing it but like setting up colonies on the moon as well if you did want to like have people living on the moon like a way of like getting people there so that they could also like have jobs in
addition to like scientists doing research you could have researchers on the moon and also people mining on the moon yeah absolutely however I feel perhaps that we need to consider some risks to this because the moon not particularly a safe place uh given what you said about the Earth having an atmosphere and there's a lot of things to contend with on the moon like the dark and the cold and the radiation yeah so anything that we send up there has got to be dark cold
radiation proof and also able to operate in very low gravity yeah I mean that also adds into why it's going to cost lots of money because the equipment and all the facilities that you would need to set up there they need to be resistant or able to cope with the really harsh conditions on the Moon Yeah so basically all the stuff that you need for mining on Earth but just like make it extra extra like super like hard and resilient which is then presumably going to weigh more so
I'm going to need a really big spaceship to get to the moon in the first place yeah way more this like maybe like different slightly different compositions and materials I mean you also need to actually like build buildings on the moon so you whether or not you're going to like build whole buildings and then ship that to the Moon as whole pieces or flat packet like Ikea furniture and then ship it to the moon cuz you can do that with houses that is true that is true
but I think that might be a long way off uh the technology to Flat pack mining equipment ship it to the Moon with someone who can then assemble it at the other end in loow gravity seems like a lot of steps yeah it's also like the risk just associated with launching space Rockets to get to the moon because the safety record is a lot better now but there's still risk of stuff of unsuccessful launches yes absolutely quite dangerous quite risky is what I'm getting from
this and also can I even really do it in the first play yeah that is a really good question okay so technically um there was a 1979 Moon agreement which basically set out that no country or Nation can have sovereignty of the Moon I.E they can't actually like own bits of the Moon Yeah but it hasn't actually been ratified or signed by um any major world power so in theory no you cannot mine on the moon or claim ownership on any resources of the moon but at the same time the people who
do have the capacity to go to the moon and start mining the haven't actually like sign agreed to this officially so they could M there a little bit of a loophole in this agreement then perhaps yeah a bit of a loophole yeah it's interesting that they didn't actually sign it yes that is interesting because with the civilian space War the uh Americans said way back when they signed the treaties and things like that that space was for everyone but they wanted private companies to be
able to go to space if that was their wish it didn't have to be like a Esa NASA the Russian one situation yeah yeah exactly yeah cuz we got uh Space X they're the main one who are like commercial yeah and yeah I'm sure there are others who are going to be looking into trying to commercialize space travel or even things to get stuff into space cuz I know there are like private companies who launch satellites yeah absolutely so then why couldn't we have a private company mining on the moon and
also presumably the world or industry would very much want the metals and the helium 3 uh Isotopes so if I was you know effectively a business provid in that resource then I'm going to have customers you know it's going to be for the benefit of Industry to buy those materials from me which we didn't have before so really I'm doing the world a favor yeah yeah absolutely I mean there are lots of resources on the moon that are really important in terms of decarbonization and advancing
technology and yeah so we kind of need these materials because the Earth could run out so we need to get from some other places do we have to be also not conscious because a lot of the problems that come from mining on Earth is like destruction of habitats and pollution of rivers and all of that sort of like negative connotations you know people are very exploited sometimes in the mining industry but on the moon nothing's living on the moon so I'm not destroying anyone's habitat because
nothing lives there there are no rivers to pollute even though there is water as we now know but there's no like there's no negative environmental impact necessarily of mining the moon directly the potentially could be more of an environment impact on Earth if I'm sending up 25 space Rockets every month to uh get my resources there and back yeah like yeah that's a really really good point because on if you if you're mining on the moon you avoid or you eliminate certain issues that are ass
really highly associated with mining on Earth so all most of the environmental and social issues are pretty much eliminated because there's no one no one living on the moon there's no real like ecosystem yeah uh so pollution environmental damage pretty much eliminated cuz there's not much on the moon and also presumably I'm not going to have to go that deep am I to get different uh materials I'm not going to be you're not going to look at the Moon and see me
having you know made it 3/4 of a sphere I'm not going to be carving out giant sections or maybe I am maybe I'll be sending diggers to the Moon I mean that is something that we may need to send to the Moon depending on what how we're going to try to extract stuff so like with the water that's that's attached to the Luna dust so we would need to like scoop up the Luna dust and then process that but for the other materials I think might also be be similar for helium 3 CU
that's just from theep Moon surface being bombarded with solar radiation but how do I extract helium 3 what do I need that is a really good question I don't think anyone actually knows that because we haven't we we just know it's there we know it's possible in theory so I need to develop some new technologies then if I'm going to be getting the helium three from the Moon yep same with the water cuz it's in the lunar dust but for the rare earth metals it'll be very
similar to how we extract it on on Earth we just dig for the ores dig for the ores okay perfect so potentially I could then I would need a lot of resources this is basically what it comes down to is that because there is no infrastructure for this in place regardless if the world would let me do it as a private company it's all about getting the stuff to the moon setting up some kind of plant or rig or big drill and then getting the stuff home like those are
the main three issues and that is going to cost an awful lot of time and resources and cash yep it's going to cost a lot of money but there's already a company looking into to do it so there's a startup who are already looking into how whether or not they can harvest the resources from the Moon right uh as far as I'm aware that it's only one but we could see more especially if like more people become aware of it and become interested in mining on the moon yeah absolutely I could see I mean
think of SpaceX didn't exist what 50 years ago and now it's sending its own astronauts civilians whatever you want to call them into space so yeah sending tourists into space we've got space tourism I feel like really mining the moon for resources probably isn't that far away in the grand scheme of things yeah and then we could maybe even then move on to mining on other planets or moons on moons of other planets cuz they also have resources isn't there um a is it a moon that apparently rains
diamonds yes so this is really interesting and I have my notes somewhere so on Saturn it occasionally rains diamonds isn't that absolutely wild and potentially also on Uranus and Neptune uh but they're obviously further away so imagine if you could go there and collect diamonds because of like the incredible pressure uh that these like atmospheres of these planets yeah that would be really cool it would sound to be I mean if you were caught in a diamond hail storm yeah be
be very painful incredibly hard hail yeah just like your umbrella would be like have holes within like a few seconds because diamonds are so hard and sharp isn't that I mean I think it would be technically impossible because of the extreme atmospheric pressure so like you would never really be able to harness it because everything would just be crushed uh but if we could figure it out we could make an absolute Fortune yeah absolutely I mean we could also it's not
just other planets and other moons of other planets that potentially have resources that Humanity would be interested in in mining there's also asteroids that could be very valuable yes there's a asteroid called psyche and it's apparently Laden with so many precious metals that people have estimated it's worth 10,000 quadrillion dollars wow that's just for the precious metals that's in this big asteroid so yeah potentially lots of very valuable resources and lots of money to be made
from mining not just on the main but other things are in space yeah I think that's definitely a really interesting question about how we could I wasn't going to say exploit but how we could use things in space for us because because psyche like you said is a gold mine like it's full of elements that we use every day and unfortunately we are you know running out of things on earth so why not turn to space and start mining things like that it really reminds me of that um
Netflix TV show and I can't remember what it was called but they were mining ice and a lot of the show was based around mining ice and shipping ice back CU they all needed water they all lived in Space by this point uh but like water was the most precious resource and so they were mining ice and they shiing it across Cosmos it was good can't remember what it was called yeah I mean there was water on the moon we could end up having to mind it from the moon because we've got taminated all of our
water I mean that is a depressing thought and I'm all for saving Earth's resources and Recycling and reducing our environmental impact which we should definitely do but potentially a good source of materials on the moon and I don't think though it could go either way that we would then damage the mo enough to start messing with the tides presumably that wouldn't be a thing that would be a very big you would that would be like very significant thing to do if
you could alter the moon so much that it actually impacts the tides because that would mean you reduce the mass of the Moon by quite a bit yeah weing all the stuff then maybe we are reducing its mass potentially we have to reduce it pretty significantly though wouldn't we yeah have to reduce it buy quite a lot but yeah I mean then we be putting stuff back maybe we can you know start swapping things to keep the moon in the right MTH be like not quite like future
arm but we start putting all our trash on the moon yeah I was just going to say trash like rubbish start shipping that back to the Moon yep so how about if you had all the money and all the resources would you do it would you go for Moon mining as a thing uh I would go for Moon mining but probably not for water but probably for the helium 3 just because that seems to be where all the big books are right now yeah that's an interesting point because you said they were used for like cooling
supercomputers right yeah so helium 3 it's uh it's got really useful properties so that um one of the properties is that um it can you can like cool it down to really really close to absolute zero and um that's really useful in quantum computers so quantum computers are basically super computers but better faster but because they are better and faster than than supercomputers and even regular computers um they they get really hot so you need much better coolant for them so that they can like
stay cool and operate and don't die so yeah helium 3 seems to be their demand for it interestingly prior to like the 2000s when people wanted to use helium 3 for superutes people wanted to use helium 3 for nuclear fusion oh you said we got it from nuclear reactions yeah but that's okay Laura's probably going to kill me but uh it's it's Vision right is it fision yeah it's Vision where it splits into one or two smaller nuclear yes yeah so they want to use it for
Fusion which which is joining which is joining and according to um most nuclear scientist regardless of like what decade you ask them they will always say it's going to happen in the next 50 years we're always 50 years away from it and that 50e market just moves further and further away yeah that's interesting so we could see it I think it's not such a ridiculous concept you know when people say on mining on the moon it seems very out there very far away but I'm I'm
leaning towards it to be honest I can see a lot of benefits potentially from mining on the moon excellent I'm convinced you to invest quadrillions if not billions of dollars into my hypothetical startup that's going to extract uh heing through from the Moon I think we might face a little bit of international outrage if we start our own company yeah for sure so we might have to hire some very good lawyers to make sure that we don't get sued for all that we yeah but what we can do is
because there's already one startup who wants to explore mining on the main we could see just see what they do and whatever mistakes they make we learn from those mistakes we learn from those mistakes stuff that they do well we also learn from that and beat them to the punch and get there first yeah I do I do wonder if this is where it's going to go but I think we're a little way out if it was in our lifetime I would be surprised yeah I mean we could potentially see it in our lifetime I
mean people we already have Moon not Moon tourism but space tourism yes so true so probably and I know that other space agencies are interested in sending people to the Moon because there hasn't been another person actually on the moon since Neil Armstrong since the 60s at least yeah um there was people always moon mission who was the last person on the moon so I don't think it was Neil was it no thought cuz we always talk about we're going to send someone else to the moon
but then that we never do yeah I think um NASA is looking at a mission at the moment the emus missions are like the the like Return To The Moon missions which they're in various phases of but according to Google the last take yeah the last person on the moon there have been uh 24 people who all made the journey the first person to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong but the last person to walk on the moon was Eugene cernon who that was in 1972 yeah so I think it's time I think it was
time we got someone back on the moon let's give them a big old Spade they can send us some good old Rare Earth elements and let's make some cold Hard Cash yeah they can send us some lunar dust and then we can see if we can figure out how we're going to extract all that water and all that helium three I wonder what also is the best option is whether we you know Luna dust presumably not too difficult to collect we could we could scoop it yeah relatively easily
bag it ship it back to Earth and then on Earth you could do the extraction of the water from the dust or is it better to extract the water on the moon because that seems like a lot more infrastructure is needed yeah it's a lot more infrastructure but like it depends on what works out easier because if you can extract the water directly then you would have to transport less but then Luna is very light but then how many molecules are you getting per gram of dust exactly you may need to
transport lots of Luna dust just to get a small quantity of water I did have someone did I think it was NASA did publish something about uh water on the moon and how much there is so yeah the 2020 there was the sopia mission and it revealed that in one of the crators on the moon there exists water in concentrations equivalent to around 12 O W uh within a cubic meter of soil okay which is uh 12 O is not a lot but it's not nothing it's not nothing yeah very very interesting cool so I
think that might be a good place to leave it we've covered everything from what we could get from the Moon how we could get there potentially even if we'd get sued going up there in the first place and the massive amount of money time and resources that it would take to establish a successful Moon mining operation but it doesn't feel impossible to me it does feel like something that could be done and maybe even we could Branch out into things like asteroids moons of other planets or even start
mining diamonds from Neptune and Saturn instead uh if you've enjoyed this episode then drop us a like and we'll see you next time the views expressed in this podcast belong entirely to the person that said them they did not represent any industry or organization if you enjoyed listening to these views it would really help us out if you could rate US leave a review and tell a friend this podcast was sponsored by no one but if you're interested in funding us to continue to
have Frank discussions about science and engineering please get in touch [Music]