Elvis requires “House Wilderness” to Defend Photo voltaic System From Mining!
Visitor ridiculing marveling by David Middleton
I needed to take a break from writing the sequel to How Local weather Change Buried a Desert 20,000 Ft Beneath the Gulf of Mexico Seafloor after operating throughout this gem on Actual Clear Science this morning…
Malthusians in House!
From The Grauniad’s “You Couldn’t Make This Kind of Schist Up If You Had been Making an attempt Desk”….
Defend photo voltaic system from mining ‘gold rush’, say scientists
Proposal requires wilderness safety as startup area miners look to the celebrities
Ian Pattern Science editor
Solar 12 Might 2019 13.24 EDT
Nice swathes of the photo voltaic system ought to be preserved as official “area wilderness” to guard planets, moons and different heavenly our bodies from rampant mining and different types of industrial exploitation, scientists say.
The proposal requires greater than 85% of the photo voltaic system to be positioned off-limits to human improvement, leaving little greater than an eighth for area companies to mine for valuable metals, minerals and different helpful supplies.
Whereas the restrict would shield pristine worlds from the worst excesses of human exercise, its main purpose is to make sure that humanity avoids a catastrophic future by which the entire sources inside its attain are completely used up.
“If we don’t take into consideration this now, we are going to go forward as we at all times have, and in just a few hundred years we are going to face an excessive disaster, a lot worse than we’ve on Earth now,” mentioned Martin Elvis, a senior astrophysicist on the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “When you’ve exploited the photo voltaic system, there’s nowhere left to go.”
[…]
The Grauniad
I used to be going to ridicule this text… However then I noticed that it was self-ridiculing. Actually, each sentence is silly. I’m actually marveling on this article…
Elvis in House!
Working with Tony Milligan, a thinker at King’s School London, Elvis analysed how quickly people would possibly expend the photo voltaic system’s most accessible sources ought to area mining take off.
Elvis has left the planet…
“Elvis isn’t useless, he simply went house!”
Thanks, thanks very a lot.
As a result of people would possibly battle to mine the solar, or extract helpful supplies from Jupiter, a fuel big with extra mass than the remainder of the photo voltaic system’s planets mixed, the researchers see asteroids, the moon, Mars and different rocky planets as probably the most practical targets for area miners.
Elvis and the thinker
Elvis and the thinker “see asteroids, the moon, Mars and different rocky planets as probably the most practical targets for area miners. “
“Do we would like cities on the close to aspect of the moon that gentle up at evening? Would that be inspiring or horrifying?”
Elvis
“Do we would like cities on the close to aspect of the moon that gentle up at evening?”
We actually wouldn’t need the Moon to be lit up at evening. This is able to be horrifying…
Why Does the Moon Shine?
A dose of actuality
JPL
New NASA Mission to Assist Us Be taught How you can Mine Asteroids
Apollo’s Legacy Is NASA’s Future
NASA has been discussing ideas for human lunar exploration for the reason that Apollo flights ended. On this 1995 artist’s idea, a lunar mining operation harvests oxygen from the lunar soil in Mare Serenatatis, just a few kilometers from the Apollo 17 touchdown website.
Picture Credit score: SAIC/Pat Rawlings
There’s Helium-Three in them thar regoliths
What would we mine on the Moon?
The presence of helium-Three was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-Three.
“It’s thought that this isotope may present safer nuclear power in a fusion reactor, since it’s not radioactive and wouldn’t produce harmful waste merchandise,’’ the European House Company mentioned.
There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-Three embedded within the moon, although solely a few quarter of that realistically may very well be delivered to Earth, mentioned Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Know-how Institute on the College of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council.
That’s nonetheless sufficient to satisfy the world’s present power calls for for a minimum of two, and probably as many as 5, centuries, Kulcinski mentioned. He estimated helium-Three’s worth at about $5 billion a ton, that means 250,000 tons can be price within the trillions of .
The Quest to Discover a Trillion-Greenback Nuclear Gasoline on the Moon, Bloomberg, June 26, 2018
How would it not have an effect on the Moon if we eliminated 250,000 metric tons of 3He from the lunar regolith?
Apollo samples collected in 1969 by Neil Armstrong on the primary lunar touchdown, and different samples collected on later missions, have proven that helium-Three concentrations in lots of lunar soils are a minimum of 13 components per billion by weight. Detailed analyses of lunar soil samples and different proof point out that in situ helium-Three concentrations in all probability vary between twenty and thirty components per billion in undisturbed, titanium-rich soils (Schmitt, 2006, pp. 86-92). Schmitt concludes that helium-Three averages about 20ppb within the titanium-rich influence commutated basalt regolith, of Mare Tranquillitatis sampled by Apollo 11. Extrapolation of knowledge from neutron spectrographic measurements of hydrogen concentrations in lunar polar areas (Feldman, et al, 1998; Maurice, S., et al, 2004) point out that helium-Three could triple in common abundance at latitudes above 70 because of chilly trapping (Schmitt, et al, 2000; Cocks, private communication, 2009).
Twenty components per billion could not appear to be a lot; nonetheless, the worth of helium-Three relative to the possible power equal worth of coal in 2010-2020, estimated conservatively at $2.50 per million BTU (zero.25 x 106kcal) might be virtually $1400 per gram ($40,000 per ounce)! This compares with about $28 per gram ($800 per ounce) for gold initially of 2009. At $1400 per gram, 100 kilograms (220 kilos) of helium-Three can be price about $140 million. 100 kilograms constitutes greater than sufficient gas to doubtlessly energy a 1000 megawatt electrical plant for a yr when fused with deuterium, the terrestrially ample heavy isotope of hydrogen.
The manufacturing of 100 kilograms (220 kilos) of helium-Three per yr would require annual mining and processing of about two sq. kilometers (1.6 sq. mi.) of the lunar floor to a depth of three meters (9.eight ft.) (Schmitt, 2006, pp. 92-98). In flip, that annual price requires hourly mining of an space about twenty-eight meters sq. (92 ft.) and three meters (9.1 ft.) deep together with the hourly processing of the best fifty p.c of the mined soil (about 2000 tonnes/hour or 4400 ton/hour) to extract its gases. This isn’t a excessive mining and processing price by terrestrial requirements, though a excessive diploma of automation might be required on the Moon relative to mining and processing of uncooked supplies on Earth. The annual price solely mandates two, ten-hour mining shifts per day, twenty days out of every lunar month (about twenty-seven Earth-days lengthy). If expertise exhibits that preventive and precise upkeep takes lower than seven days per lunar month, then mining and processing charges will be increased. Personnel wanted per miner-processor are estimated at a mean of eight, together with operations, upkeep and help crew (Schmitt, 2006, pp. 134-137).
Schmitt et al., 2011
Fake for a second that vital figures don’t matter…
2 km2 x zero.zero03 km —> 100 kg 3He zero.006 km3 —> 100 kg 3He 6 km3 —> 1 metric ton 3He 1,500,000 km3 —> 250,000 metric ton 3He
What’s the quantity of the Moon? 21,900,000,000 km3 … The removing of zero.007% of the Moon may present all of mankind’s power wants for 200-500 years. 99.993% of the moon can be unaffected. What’s that? We might be scarring the Moon with holes?
NASA
If digging up 5,000 km2 of the lunar regolith would yield sufficient 3He to energy our civilization for 200 to 500 years… I say, “Go for it!”… significantly since there are already holes on the Moon a lot bigger than those we might dig.
Greatest, Deepest Crater Exposes Hidden, Historic Moon
03.04.10
Shortly after the Moon shaped, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a very monumental crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, virtually 1,500 miles throughout and greater than 5 miles deep.
“That is the most important, deepest crater on the Moon — an abyss that might engulf the US from the East Coast by means of Texas,” mentioned Noah Petro of NASA’s Goddard House Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Md. The influence punched into the layers of the lunar crust, scattering that materials throughout the Moon and into area. The great warmth of the influence additionally melted a part of the ground of the crater, turning it right into a sea of molten rock.
That was simply a gap shot. Asteroid bombardment over billions of years has left the lunar floor pockmarked with craters of all sizes, and coated with solidified lava, rubble, and dirt. Glimpses of the unique floor, or crust, are uncommon, and views into the deep crust are rarer nonetheless.
Thankfully, a crater on the sting of the South Pole-Aitken basin could present simply such a view. Referred to as the Apollo Basin and shaped by the later influence of a smaller asteroid, it nonetheless measures a good 300 miles throughout.
[…]
NASA
The lunar floor has an space of about 235 million km2 . The Aitken basin covers four.6 million km2 . The Moon can spare 5,000 km2 of regolith.
“Elvis is in all places”
In fact, no put up about Elvis in House may very well be full with out a little Mojo Nixon…
Reference
Schmitt, Harrison H., Mark W. Henley, Kim Kuhlman, Gerald. L. Kulcinski, John F. Santarius, Lawrence A. Taylor. “Lunar Helium-Three Fusion Useful resource Distribution”. College of Wisconsin-Madison. (2011)
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