ticket to the moon

Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
May 2, 2007
Other related coverage


MANKIND'S second race for the moon has taken on a distinctly Cold War feel, with the Russian space agency accusing its old rival NASA of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration.

The charge comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the US is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming.

A new era of international co-operation in space supposedly dawned after the US, Russia and other powers declared their intention to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

But while NASA has lobbied for support from Britain and the European Space Agency, Russia says its offers have been rebuffed.

"We are ready to co-operate but for some reason the United States has announced that it will carry out the program itself," Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos, said on Monday. "Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the program."

NASA announced in December that it was planning to build an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024. The Russian space rocket manufacturer Energia revealed an even more ambitious program last August, saying it would build a permanent moon base by 2015.

While the Americans have been either coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar program is the industrial extraction of helium-3.

While critics dismiss it a 21st-century equivalent of the medieval alchemist's fruitless quest to turn lead into gold, some scientists say helium-3 could be the answer to the world's energy woes.

As helium-3 is non-polluting and effective in tiny quantities, many countries are taking it very seriously. Germany, India and China, which will launch a lunar probe to research extraction techniques in September, are all studying ways to mine the isotope.

"Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit," said Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China's lunar program.

Energia says it will start "industrial scale delivery" of helium-3, transported by cargo space ships no later than 2020. Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant , is said to be strongly supportive of the project.

The US has appeared much more cautious, not least because scientists are yet to discover the secrets of large scale nuclear fusion. Commercial fusion reactors look unlikely to come on line before 2050.

But many in Moscow's space program believe Washington's agenda is driven by a desire to monopolise helium-3 mining. They allege that the US President, George Bush, has moved experts on helium-3 into key positions on NASA's advisory council.

The plot, says Erik Galimov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, would "enable the US to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out".

[charmc]

Same old story, different players. Some say Putin plans to still be running the show then.

[Guillermo]

"The isotope is extremely rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. Some experts estimate there a millions of tons in lunar soil and that a single Space-Shuttle load would power the entire United States for a year"

Holy Cow! I want one gram of that stuff to power my good old Marie for ever!

On the other hand:
"Jim Benson, founder of space contractor SpaceDev, which helped build SpaceShipOne's engine and is a subcontractor of the Missile Defense Agency, said mining the moon for helium-3 doesn't pass the "net energy analysis" test. It would require more energy to retrieve helium-3 and bring it back than it would yield.
Just, sending mining equipment to the moon, and then returning processed helium-3 back to earth, would cost billions in rocket fuel, said Benson.
"We just don't have a need for helium-3," he said. "It's not practical."

I was in Spain March, I never saw you?
what do you design, sounds like more ships than sailing yachts?

[marshmat]

More conspiracy theories....
Helium-3 is indeed rare on Earth. But it's not rare enough to warrant flying it back from the Moon, not with today's technology and not with any spaceflight technology currently in development. And while helium-3 (two protons, a neutron and two electrons) might be a promising candidate for fusion research, it's far from being the only atom that can be made to react this way.
Perhaps the reason NASA is rebuffing the Russians has something to do with the ISS. NASA had its own delays on that project, some major (Columbia being perhaps the most disruptive), but key elements of the station that were to be designed and built in Russia have had funding pulled, or been delayed, or cancelled outright, or didn't work right and had to be redesigned, etc. I suspect NASA views Russia as a less than reliable collaborator on space ventures. The ESA on the other hand has a track record of coming in pretty close to on time, on budget and on design.

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by lazeyjack

I was in Spain March, I never saw you?
what do you design, sounds like more ships than sailing yachts?

We mainly work on pro boats and vessels, mostly fishing & mussel culture ones, also doing some dredges, towing, passengers and other vessels. For the recreative market we act mainly as surveyors for CE marking (both motoring and sailing). No yacht designing nowadays, although we have done some in the past.
Since a couple of years ago we have come into a representations activity for a few very special products.
Cheers.

Originally Posted by Guillermo

We mainly work on pro boats and vessels, mostly fishing & mussel culture ones, also doing some dredges, towing, passengers and other vessels. For the recreative market we act mainly as surveyors for CE marking (both motoring and sailing). No yacht designing nowadays, although we have dome some in the past.
Since a couple of years ago we have come into a representations activity for a few very special products.
Cheers.

i built several mussel harvesting vessels, state of art in NZ i WILL FIND SOME PICS The industry is very big there, green lipped mussel , very tasty

[Guillermo]

Yes, people can find your green mussels in Portugal and the Canary islands, but not (to my knowledge) in mainland Spain. Tasty musels, but I prefer the local ones (more tasty to me).
I'd like to see your mussel boats.
Cheers.

take a look, here, they are the guys that built the keel in my gallery, they used to work for me, I think they are the best metal builders in NZ, The mussel boat there, on the website, I was project manager for, in the beginning
http://www.bosandcarrboatbuilding.co.nz/frames.htm

i built them from 1990 til 97, but my main biz was yachts
well you have to have em alive, they now pack on the boat in one tonne bags
that boat there takes abt 90 tonne I think, may be wrong
they are grown on long lines called backbones, from the backbone lines go down. It is very interesting watching them seed the lines

the nice shaped harvester there was done with Maxsurf, according to Scott Carr, maxsurf even shows where to stretch and form plates

[Guillermo]

Nice boat and nice building job. I'll post in a couple of days from the office some images and specs from the ones around here. Now I'm going to bed, as tomorrow I have to travel early.
Good night, good morning, or whatever.
Cheers.

[timgoz]

I must be in an energy/technology blackout. Thats the first I've heard of Helium 3. Sounds like it may have alot of potential. With fossil fuels decreasing and population & industry increasing we sure need something inovative and abundant for our future.

TGoz

[marshmat]

Thats the first I've heard of Helium 3. Sounds like it may have alot of potential. With fossil fuels decreasing and population & industry increasing we sure need something inovative and abundant for our future.

Helium 3 is hardly a fuel by our current standards. Certain scientists are excited about it because it is, theoretically, relatively easy to initiate nuclear fusion in 3-He. All of this is purely theoretical now and there are certainly other materials, eg. deuterium, that can fuse.

The best application for this potential fuel is interplanetary travel. Launching the vehicle from earth and fueling it from the moon is more efficient than ferrying fuel from earth.

That's for sure. An amazing proportion of the cost of spaceflight is the problem of simply getting the fuel out of Earth's gravity well; the problem is so difficult and so energy-intensive that well over 90% of the average launch vehicle is simply dumped partway up, once its purpose of carrying that stage's fuel is complete. Getting stuff off the moon requires that we escape less than a sixth of the gravity.

[charmc]

Originally Posted by rayk

By the way I cant believe there isnt a better name for our moon. The other planets have named moons dont they? Same for our sun, no name.
If we make contact now the aliens will think are going to think us a little unsophisticated.
"Earth is the third planet from the sun, and is orbited by the moon. They are calling us extra terrestrials. Lets enslave them for a laugh!"

On the other hand, having beamed a few of us up, maybe they already know we're incredibly boring, and that's why they've left us alone all these years.

Question: How come they never beam up Stephen Hawking, only dimwits?