# Russia to build mine on the moon by 2020 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 30, 2006, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181 "2006-01-30T06:23:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/21 "2006-01-30T16:41:20Z")
> [@CynicalGabe](#): > > Russia to build mine on the moon by 2020 Why does it have to be _yours_? Can’t we all share? Sheesh, you think you know a Doper, then they get all stingy on you. Tripler Why can’t it be ‘ours’? ---
**Author:** ![CynicalGabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@CynicalGabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CynicalGabe)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/22 "2006-01-30T17:21:39Z")
> [@Stentor 2.5](#): > > Will the energy supplied the Helium-3 be more than the energy used in going back and forth from Earth to the Moon? It’s irrelevant if the H3 isn’t available on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cornelius_Tuggerson)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/23 "2006-01-30T17:48:45Z")
Its all fun and games until the miners rebell, build a giant rail canon and start launching rocks at NORAD ---
**Author:** ![Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/regallag_the_axe/32/445_2.png) [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regallag_The_Axe)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/24 "2006-01-30T17:50:51Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > Why can’t it be ‘ours’? It is ours. We speak of ourself in the plural after all. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/25 "2006-01-30T19:42:49Z")
> [@faldureon](#): > > Its all fun and games until the miners rebell, build a giant rail canon and start launching rocks at NORAD Is that canon? ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/26 "2006-01-30T20:40:26Z")
The Russians _and_ the Chinese? Paging Arthur C. Clarke … But yeah, if either one of those actually gets off the ground (har har), I’m all for it. And funding these is no problem. All the major countries have to do is convince the USA to cut their defense funding into three parts. One third remains for defense, one third feeds everyone on the planet, and the other third could buy warp drive if we wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Stentor\_2.5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Stentor\_2.5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stentor_2.5)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/27 "2006-01-30T20:56:08Z")
> [@CynicalGabe](#): > > It’s irrelevant if the H3 isn’t available on Earth. Why would you spend more energy going to get the stuff than you would get back from using it? ---
**Author:** ![CynicalGabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@CynicalGabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CynicalGabe)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/28 "2006-01-30T21:07:53Z")
> [@Stentor 2.5](#): > > Why would you spend more energy going to get the stuff than you would get back from using it? Sorry, my response was sleep deprived and nonsensical. The fuel isn’t available on earth, so it would be necessary to get it from the moon. What I mean to say was that a fusion reaction is going to produce a lot more energy than running the ships back and forth, especially if they are going to develop a number of low-powered, slow moving cargo containers to ferry the stuff back. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/29 "2006-01-30T21:08:29Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > Here’s a link to [Energia Space Corporation’s](http://www.energia.ru/english/) site: looks like the old Soviet space program was privatised, with the Russian government a major stakeholder. The company also looks like Bond Villains-R-Us, offering a complete line in prosthetic hands, electric wheelchairs, satellite launches and lunar bases. All it lacks is Persian cats and links to henchmen recruitment sites. Strictly speaking the “Russian Space Program” was always a collection of bureaus (in capitalistpigspeak, contractors) which were just requirements managed by various customers among the Soviet defense agencies. (Soviet space programs were all military in basis.) The Russian Space Agency was formed after the fall of the Soviet Union to act as a clearinghouse for the various privatized bureaus (Energya being the most noteworty) in the same way that NASA’s predecessor, NACA, coordinated research efforts and distributed information. Back to the topic at hand: there are several problems with this whole plan, not the least of which is the lack of an existing Soviet vessel capable of cisLunar transport. Strictly speaking, the Soviets do not have a booster capable of delivering personnel to Luna in a single booster configuration. The Energya booster–the one that powered their _Buran_ shuttle on its single flight–could possibly do so, but it remains to be man-rated, and in any case the tooling has long sat idle and unmaintained. Nor is there any proven way to lift significant masses off of the Moon’s surface and transporting it back to Earth in an economic fashion. (_Apollo_ was not economical by a long shot.) One can argue that economies of scale, particularly with a valuable new energy source, could make Lunar mining valuable but that is a highly speculative to say the least. **matt** has already gone into some detail regarding the likelyhood of viable energy-producing fusion in the foreseeable future; suffice it to say that even bringing back [sup]3[/sup]He doesn’t address the issue of nuclear fusion. The Soviets put a lot of money into fusion research–from what I’ve read, substantially more than the US and Europe–and yet have failed to develop the technology to a self-sustaining level. I’m not sure what the state of research is in modern Russia, but I’m pretty confident that they aren’t seeing the kind of funding they did back when Moscow could be legitimately classified as the central cortex of a major world power. In short, this is another blow-hard, get-rich-quick scheme the likes of which have been prevelent in the last few years from the increasingly desperate Russian Federation. There is no evidence that anyone is willing to pony up the kind of money or technological development necessary to make this a reality. 'Course, I can say the same thing about certain American programs that are being promoted… Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/30 "2006-01-30T21:20:22Z")
Another point I failed to address in the previous post: the article mentions using the ISS as a staging point for their lunar shuttle. Sorry, but that in and of itself belies a lack of serious consideration for this proposal. The ISS is in an orbit that is completely wrong for escape into a cislunar transit or receipt; you’d expend far more energy in trying to make cislunar transfer from the ISS, and there’s no way (with current technology) that a returning payload could dock with it; you’d be better to send it right down to Earth. It also has no facilities to handle any kind of bulk cargo or refueling operations. You could presumably add modules for this purpose, but to what point? By the time you finished adding additional modules (and more modules to power and support such activities) you may as well have built a new station, and one that is properly positioned and well-suited to commerical enterprise. Add to that the fact that, _sans_ the STS (US Space Shuttle system) and with the deletion of the propulsion module to the ISS’s capability, there is no way to maintain the ISS in orbit indefinitely, thanks to her Low Earth, _Soyuz_-accessible orbit. There’s no guarantee that the ISS will still be in orbit by 2020; any plan hinging on that as a critical staging point is deeply flawed in conception. I’d love to see mining on the Moon–shades of Heinlein (his best novel, methinks)–but this is a hash dream, not a serious plan. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/31 "2006-01-30T21:27:16Z")
In Russia, mines moon YOU! ---
**Author:** ![Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Cornelius\_Tuggerson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cornelius_Tuggerson)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/32 "2006-01-30T21:55:03Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > Is that canon? You know we’ve been using that word a lot lately, I don’t think it means what we think it means. :smack: 😛 ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/33 "2006-01-30T21:58:03Z")
He3 is present in lunar soil at a concentration of about 1 part in 200 million. Which means that in order to extract indutrially useful quantites of the stuff, you need to process massive quantities of lunar dust and rock. That implies a major industrial operaion, with the various bulldozers, rock-crushers, ovens, and the apparatus to seperate out the He3 from all the other gases extracted from lunar dust. Which implies a moon-to-earth launch infrastructure far beyond anything we have today or are likely to have in the near future. The energy returned from the He3 is greater than the energy required to get it from the moon, but I suspect that, even if we develop working fusion reactors, it won’t be economically feasable to mine it from the moon for a long time. Maybe if we get a working orbital tether up first to make launching the mining and processing equipment cheap enough. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/34 "2006-01-30T22:01:01Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > Passed the OP’s link along elsewhere, and got back this link in return: > > [China Sets to Land on Moon by 2010](http://english.people.com.cn/200205/20/eng20020520_96061.shtml) > > Cold war in space, this time? The article says: > [@](#): > > “China is expected to complete its first exploration of the moon in 2010 and will establish a base on the moon as we did in the South Pole and the North Pole,” Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China’s moon exploration programme, said at an exhibition on space technology, part of the ongoing second national science week. China has Arctic and Antarctic bases?! ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181/35 "2006-01-30T22:01:20Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > In short, this is another blow-hard, get-rich-quick scheme the likes of which have been prevelent in the last few years from the increasingly desperate Russian Federation. [appalling pun] Just prospectus talk, then. [/appalling pun] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-to-build-mine-on-the-moon-by-2020/342181.md?page=1)