Billionaire closer to mining the moon for trillions of dollars in riches

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Moon Express, the first private company in history to receive government permission to travel beyond Earth's orbit, announced Tuesday that it raised another $20 million in private equity financing to fund its maiden lunar mission to take place in late 2017. This brings the total amount of private investment to $45 million from investors that include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund and Autodesk (ADSK). 

What may have added impetus to investor interest in Moon Express is President Trump's picks for the NASA transition team — Charles Miller and Chris Shank — and the leading candidate to become the next NASA administrator, GOP Rep. Jim Bridenstine. All support commercial space ventures and manned exploration — including lunar missions. 

If successful, the new MX-1 lunar lander from Moon Express would not only win the $20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, it would also help jump-start a new era of space exploration. Up until now, only government-funded missions from the United States, China and Russia have landed on the moon.

Last year the U.S. government made a historic ruling to allow the company to engage in peaceful commercial lunar exploration and discovery following consultations with the FAA, White House, State Department and NASA.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technologyinvesting/billionaire-closer-to-mining-the-moon-for-trillions-of-dollars-in-riches/ar-AAmsoaF?li=BBnb4R7&ocid=edgsp

[Dave Starsky]

1. Well, someone's got to do it.

As I recall, it was profit and plunder that got Columbus the backing he needed to come to America.

It would be great if survival could be the noble cause that drives us to seek out new worlds, as it did so many other early explorers, but that will be very difficult when the gap we need to hurtle is in outer space.

[asiliveandbreathe]

2. mining the moon - you mean $20Mill in someones back pocket??

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
A-Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me

Yep - kiss me baby....

[TeamPooka]

3. I wish them all the failure in the Universe

[Rage4Bacon]

7. Why? You think mankind is destined to remain trapped on this rock?

Our obvious destiny lies out there... and we get to explore it just like our ancestors explored the entire planet.

Cowering at the bottom of a gravity well is no way to end a billion year long evolutionary track.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. There's plenty of room left on this rock.

We haven't yet built large civilizations in Antarctica, Greenland, the Sahara, etc. Not to mention all the available real estate on the ocean floors.

We might be able to mine the moon, and some asteroids, but we're a long way from creating self-sustaining civilizations there.

[Rage4Bacon]

23. We didnt populate the entire world when we left Africa either

Yet, we later explored and settled in tons of places. One doesn't need to efficiently utilize Earth before leaving it.

[Calculating]

10. wtf? Why?

There's gotta be some incentive to explore space. It costs many billions of dollars, and the 'joy of exploration' alone isn't gonna cut it.

[AngryAmish]

12. Bomb the Moon!

One of the all-time greats.

[TeamPooka]

13. I'm not ready to let the uber rich plunder the universe's natural resources quite yet.

Especially the moon.
Have them strip mine and loot Mars or Venus first.
We use the moon, it's important to the Earth.
We have much more to learn out there before we let mankind destroy it all.

[Calculating]

14. They can't really hurt the moon

It's already the definition of dead. They could strip mine it, remove all the mountain tops, and cover the whole thing in radioactive waste and it wouldn't harm us one bit. Only way we'd ever be effected is if they removed enough material to disrupt the tides.

[A HERETIC I AM]

15. You've only been here 6 months or so....

And clearly have yet to learn that making perfect sense is not always appreciated.

[AgadorSparticus]

29. Because we haven't shown responsibility. We havent shown respect.

We just rape and pillage in our obsession with greedand power. I am not against space exploration or expanding our horizons. But I would like to see us do it responsibly and not approach it with our knuckles dragging along.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. Let them "mine" it all they want...

Let's just see them get anything of value back to earths surface in large enough quantities to make it profitable

It's not like there's an elevator or anything

[rzemanfl]

5. I recall reading something years ago about how easy it would be to send stuff from

the moon to earth. Vague on details.

[Rage4Bacon]

6. Easy enough

You drop a refrigerator sized block of platinum down the gravity well from orbit, and even if most of it burns up, you could end up with a basketball sized chunk of platinum with enough value to distort the entire global platinum marketplace.

Asteroids have an even higher concentration of rare minerals on average than earth or the moon, making them prime targets.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. You're Going To Refine The Platinum On The Moon?

Exactly how? Smelting? With what fuel and with what oxygen source?

Now you're refrigerator sized object is a lump of rock that is 0.001% platinum (still far higher than earth's crust) and you're basketball size survivor wouldn't have enough platinum to make a laboratory crucible until you dropped the 10 millionth refrigerator.

[Rage4Bacon]

18. Far more productive with asteroids

And it would take nuclear power to smelt... Solar isn't going to cut it at this scale just yet.

https://qz.com/776894/nasas-latest-mission-will-show-if-asteroid-mining-will-be-a-real-threat-to-the-global-platinum-industry/

[ProfessorGAC]

31. I Don't Think You've Thought The Economics Through

You're talking high 12 figures to make high 12 figures
Where's the payback?

[Blue_true]

16. It is cheaper and more lucrative to mine the

Ocean floor. Billion of tons of minerals sit on the ocean floor.

[A HERETIC I AM]

17. Precisely.

Although it could be said that it would be almost as dangerous, but certainly the technology/machinery already exists for such an endeavor.

Getting it UP from the sea floor would be easier than getting it DOWN from orbit by several orders of magnitude.

[Rage4Bacon]

19. Not really. Easy as computing a trajectory

Just drop it in, and even if 90% of it burned up, what is left would be worth billions if not trillions.

https://qz.com/776894/nasas-latest-mission-will-show-if-asteroid-mining-will-be-a-real-threat-to-the-global-platinum-industry/

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. So based on your "Basketball sized" lump you mentioned earlier....

I found a calculator that suggested one cubic foot of platinum would weigh around 650 KG or so.

@ $31, 983 per kilo X 650 = $20,788,950.

Cost to launch a kilo into orbit = Between $16K and $30,000 per kilo.

How much weight in machines and material, not to mention people or robots will it take to get your "Refrigerator sized" unit FROM THE MOON to Earth orbit and then "Drop" it, as you put it.

Maybe they'll make it work, but it isn't going to be profitable any time soon. They'll have to amortize over the course of decades.

Edite for the typo adding a "2" to the price per kilo.

[Thor_MN]

24. Cost to launch a kilo to earth orbit is not relevant to getting a kilo from the moon to orbit.

The moon's gravity is less than the Earth's, therefore the delta-V necessary to lift a kilo from the moon's surface to orbit is less than than Earth to orbit. The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere to push out of the way either, further reducing cost. Granted, there's no rocket fuel sitting on the moon, but different technologies could be used. A lunar rail gun could put solid masses that are unaffected by high G into orbit using solar generated electricity.

[A HERETIC I AM]

32. You still have to get all the machinery TO THE MOON in order to mine it

And unless there is already a factory there to build what you would need, you still have the launch costs as a startup.

[Thor_MN]

34. Which does not change the point that the cost to earth orbit is irrelevant.

Of course one needs to bring everything to (or manufacture it on) the moon. That is obvious. What apparently isn't, is that the cost to earth orbit plays no measure in getting lunar material to earth (other than the costs of getting there in the first place, of course).

[Matthew28]

8. Great news

I cheer anything that helps humanity move outwards off this planet.

[Initech]

11. So when does the theme park open?

[Xolodno]

20. In the Star Trek Movie "The Undiscovered Country"....

The Klingons over mined their moon which then exploded...

[sdfernando]

27. Praxus....

I don't know the Klingon spelling

[404usernamenotfound]

25. The "trillions of dollars in riches"

assumes today's prices for Helium-3. If they mine a lot of it, supply goes up...does demand go with it??? That's always one of the thing I laugh at when people think we can mine a planet for diamonds or gold or whatever "precious" metal they think of. It's basic economics - supply and demand.

now, unless things change drastically in the next 1,000 years with regards to population growth, access to fresh water, farming land and livestock will be worth more than anything in gold, diamonds, helium-3 or whatever else. You can't eat or drink those things.

[sdfernando]

26. Sure...it all goes well until the nuclear storage depot on the moon blows up and rips

it out of Earth orbit...sending on a wayward mission out of our galaxy.

[hunter]

28. The moon is a damned boring place mineralogically.

The most interesting mineral deposits on earth are a direct consequence of continental drift, water, and life. The moon has none of these.

There are possibly places on the moon where interesting space rocks have hit, but if that's the case then nearly anyplace in the inner solar system is more accessible than the moon. It's a lot easier to grab a rock floating in space than it is to dig one up and launch it out of the moon's gravity well.

But honestly, the whole thing is silly and probably a scam. Space is a much rougher environment for human beings than science fiction portrays. The International Space Station is in a fairly mild place, protected from the worst radiation by earth's magnetic field, and accessible by chemical rockets.

I'll bet humans like ourselves will never colonize space, even if we do manage to survive the environmental catastrophe we've created.

If we survive (and it's a big if...) Outer space will belong to our intellectual children, either Artificial Intelligences or highly engineered biological beings who can walk around naked in rough places like the surface of Mars. If our intellectual children are fond of us, these fragile human beings, then maybe they'll take us along for the ride. We'll be like the dog in their car.

One further bit of pessimism for some, optimism for others, faster-than-light travel is impossible. There's only one speed in this universe, and that's c. We are all written on the light.

[LonePirate]

30. How can any country "own" the moon? What if China beats us to it?

I can't imagine other countries in the world will allow a private enterprise to harvest something "owned" by all people on Earth.

[madinmaryland]

33. And it's going to cost trillions to set up the whole scheme to transport

the so called riches back. A bunch of billionaires who would rather waste billions of dollars rather than actually spending it on real human beings.

ASSHOLES.