Photo: pixabay
You must be well acquainted with Elon Musk’s SpaceX program that should reduce space traveling costs and put people on Mars. Well, China is here to blow your mind with yet another crazy idea - mine our natural satellite.
Why the hell would they want to do that? I mean, the Moon is mostly dirt and craters so what’s there to be mined? The answer is Helium 3 which they want for creating green energy in a new type of nuclear reactor we can’t build yet.
Sounds crazy, but China already sent a lunar orbiter near the Moon following to land a probe there and collect rock samples for further analyses here on Earth. If this goes as planned, China will be the third country to land our natural satellite after the US and Russia.
Used in a nuclear plant, Helium 3 leaves no radioactive waste, which means we can generate green energy. Zmescience estimates that 40 tons of it could power the US for a whole year.
Any hinders? Well, yeah. In order to get 40 tons of He3 you need to process about 6 billion tons of lunar soil and then ship them back to our planet. And if that sounds discouraging, we also have to wait for the right nuclear plant technology to come by in order to actually use He3.
Sounds crazy, but China already sent a lunar orbiter near the Moon following to land a probe there and collect rock samples for further analyses here on Earth. If this goes as planned, China will be the third country to land our natural satellite after the US and Russia.
So what’s the deal with Helium 3?
The element is very rare here on Earth, with just a tiny amount of it costing over $1,000. The substance comes along with the solar wind, but our planet’s magnetic field makes it ricochet and we don’t get much of it. The Moon has no magnetic field and thus it contain quite a lot of He3 trapped into its soil.Used in a nuclear plant, Helium 3 leaves no radioactive waste, which means we can generate green energy. Zmescience estimates that 40 tons of it could power the US for a whole year.
Any hinders? Well, yeah. In order to get 40 tons of He3 you need to process about 6 billion tons of lunar soil and then ship them back to our planet. And if that sounds discouraging, we also have to wait for the right nuclear plant technology to come by in order to actually use He3.
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