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Originally Posted by Booblishmoops
I am really anti-all-this-lunar-mining-thing [-X. We should preserve the moon, it's an amazing piece of natural art. A few footsteps, a flag and a monument is more than enough  . It should be a natural reserve park. |
So, you want to make a sterile rock with no life whatsoever on it a nature park?
This mindset I just can't agree with. We'd still be hiding in caves if our ancestors had thought this way.
I have no objection to mass mining of the moon in principle. It's just that there's really not much there worth bringing back. He3 mining would become economically attractive if we could bring the cost of transporting cargo to the moon down by a factor of 1000 - assuming we also had working commercial He3 fusion reactors to burn it in. The raw minerals available on the surface of the moon are all things we have plenty of here on Earth - aluminum, titanium, magnesium, silicon, and other light elements. They'll be useful to lunar colonists some day, but unlikely to be profitable to send back here.