A private company has taken astronauts into space for the first time ever. Once a cold war battleground, space exploration is now big business. European scientists say mining the moon could be a reality in as little as five years.
“Not only is it feasible to mine the moon but I think it’s going to happen [within 20 years] and it’s going to be economically profitable,” said Dr Phil Metzger, who spent 30 years at NASA as an engineer and a physicist.
We’ve exploited earth to the detriment of our environment and our cultural heritage, so is the answer to look skyward? Private companies like the Asteroid Mining Corporation or Moon Express think so. They’re all in the game of off-earth resources.
So can we do it? Or is moon mining sheer lunacy?
This week on The Case we’re looking at the three things we need to understand when it comes to mining the moon: what we would mine for, if it could be sustainable and how it would be governed.
What would we mine for?
Dr Metzger says first, we would mine water. The ice on the moon can be melted into h2o and then split, extracting the hydrogen to make rocket fuel, which means we could put a petrol station on the moon.
“If you have spacecraft landing and launching off the moon then you can refuel when you’re there,” Dr Metzger said.
Dr Metzger co-founded NASA’s KSC Swamp Works lab, which focuses on technologies for planetary surfaces including mining, manufacturing and construction using space resources. He has now been funded by NASA for inventing a new method to mine moon water. Dr Metzger says fuelling up in space would mean smaller rockets, plus much cheaper and further space exploration.
There’s also a lot of helium 3 on the moon - that’s fuel for waste free nuclear energy. Not to mention gold, platinum, rare-earth elements and a whole heap of other materials that can be used in next generation electronics. Like massive antennas, made in space from moon materials.
“We could put the entire computing industry in space and all the energy demands can be put off our planet,” Dr Metzger told The Feed.
So...Could it be sustainable?
Dr Metzger says if the energy sector is also in space, then by the end of the century we could halve our industrial footprint.
“We can unload the planet,” he said.
Science philosopher Annie Handmer from Sydney University says that’s one way of looking at it.
“Is it better that we go and mine on the moon or on asteroids rather than mining on sites where there’s say, cultural heritage, because as far we know there is no life on the moon, there isn’t life on asteroids, so what are we destroying?” she said.
On the other hand, she says we can consider space as we consider Antarctica: a pristine wilderness.
“Then in that sense you give it value for humans in being a wilderness, then it's natural to say it needs to be protected.”
“The deeper question is about what sort of society do we have? A society that requires us to keep mining things, a society that’s very hungry for resources, might not be a good long term plan,” she said.
What happens if we pollute the moon? Or damage the moon craters that carry millennia worth of scientific history and evidence? Can we avoid repeating what we did on the earth, if we have the foresight?
How would it be governed?
Is it even actually legal? In short - kind of.
There are no legally binding international treaties that explicitly prevent mining the moon. Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, no country can claim sovereignty over the moon or any bit of space, but space is declared free for exploration and use. The 1979 Moon Agreement goes further, stating “the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind” and “the exploitation” of them should be governed by an international regime.
But neither Russia, China or the US signed the Moon Agreement. The US has recently gone further, with US President Donald Trump signing an executive order basically saying it’s finders keepers when it comes to moon resources.
“The US wants companies to be able to say to shareholders ‘if we mine this thing, we get to keep the profits’,” Annie Handmer said.
NASA has also released a set of standards around moon activities including mining, known as the Artemis Accords.
The Verdict
Mining the moon might be plausible, even legal. And it could even help us avoid further destroying earth. But with private companies leading the charge, there is a lot of profit at play and history is littered with examples of pillaging for profit in truly awful ways.
At the same time, profit has pushed exploration, science and technology to where it is now. The question is: have we as a civilisation learned from the mistakes of our past?
I’m ideologically opposed to mining the moon, though I can’t deny that it could do a lot of good. But that’s only if it is actually a giant leap for all humankind and not just to line the pockets of billionaires and their shareholders.
