NASA Wants To Do Some Moon Mining Usually, things go very slow when it comes to human space travel or plans to mine bodies in space. It is being said NASA is pulling out all stops on getting ready to do some moon mining. Why are they in such a rush this time, when they have proceeded slowing with every other space related project? There are some great examples of what I am talking about, such as the Webb Space Telescope. That project started in 2004 and did not launch until 2021, and if my math is correct that was 17 years later. So why the rush? This is one of the few times we can thank the Chinese efforts in space for pushing NASA. NASA knows the Chinese would love to beat us with a moon mining project. Not only would it be a crushing blow to America’s dominance in space, the Chinese might claim some areas on the moon as Chinese property. They said they would never claim the moon in the name of China, but what about parts of the moon? When reports leaked out there was at least one base on the moon and there were photos of it and a convincing story by a former soldier who claimed he saw photos of the base while dropping off documents. If this is true, there might be far more to the story than we imagine. I have no proof of what I am about to say, but there are rumors which state we are not alone as a country in some of the space ventures we have undertaken. Look at the International Space Station for example. We are in that with several other countries, even Russia, and we still help send astronauts there from Russia even though we are supporting Ukraine during the war. It has been said there is a chance if there is a base on the moon it could be one shared by both the Americans and Russians. There could also be other countries involved, maybe even China. Think about this, there might already be some sort of mining going on, on the moon. If there is it would probably be in a small way. When I think about the moon, the setup at the South Pole comes to mind. That is a place with several different countries operating their own bases. I imagine the moon might eventually be set up this way in a decade or two. The difference between the moon and the South Pole is there are very valuable minerals on the moon which would be easier to get to than at the pole. Sure, there are problems such as how do you mine in a place that has no atmosphere? Another problem is how to get the minerals cheaply to earth. Should you build factories on the moon to manufacture products and only send the finished products to earth or just send the minerals? There is other problems which we would have to find the best and most economical solutions for. Should we develop domes with an earth like atmosphere where we could grow food. We would need a lot of water for that, but scientists think there is ice in some areas of the moon. Is this ice pure enough to melt and use? Recently the Chinese claimed they found water on the moon in tiny glass nodules which are all over the surface of the moon. Shipping food and supplies to the moon could be a very expensive proposition. We would need power on the moon for many different things. Would a nuclear power station be the most practical way to go, or would a huge solar generating plant be better? Which would be more efficient? Would it be in our best interest to develop robot machines to do the digging? Robominer is a robot digging machine which was developed for mining on earth, in areas too dangerous for humans. We could use machines like this for digging on the moon. We already have robotic vehicles which could be loaded by robotic devices and travel back to a base without the assistance of humans. There have been many articles which claim the best place for us to build a base on the moon would be in an old lava tube. The moon has quite a few of these. That might not be the most practical place however. There are investigators who claim, and have written books, which state there are the remains of glass domes over some of the craters on the moon. They also claim the glass remnants seem to prove the glass was made from moon material. Was something there before us in ancient times, or were we more advanced in our unknown past? There might be a better answer to these problems. We have talked about terraforming Mars for years now, but how about terraforming the moon? This would make the moon more like a smaller earth. I don’t know what effect the lesser gravity would have on plant growth and such, but we could run tests. If the moon was more like the earth, it would make everything easier for mining. We could use the same machines on the moon, we use on the earth. There would be other advantages also. People might decide it is a nice place to live. The atmosphere would be much purer and we could start to see cities developing there, especially if rivers and lakes develop. It could become a garden spot. There are a few things which should be investigated first. The first one I can think of has to do with the Apollo astronauts seeing a light coming out of a crater. Did the government already check this out or not? The second thing is a NASA test proved the moon was hollow or at least had a very large hollow area. The was found out when NASA crashed a rocket into the moon and then they said it rang like a bell for over an hour. A way to terraform a planet or moon relatively fast is by using microbes. Would the moon qualify for this type of terraforming, I can’t answer this positively if this method was used, but some believe it is possible. If this microbial terraforming wouldn’t work on the moon for some reason, there is a slower way to accomplish this with factories pumping out the required ingredients to create an atmosphere. If we used the second method it could take a hundred years to finish. The moon is going to become even more important to us in the near future and could eventually become an industrial center someday.
|
