China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

Re:China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout by stubish on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @06:06AM (#18910288)

Maybe nothing worth shipping back to earth, but perhaps resources for shipping to orbit. Fuel, space ship components, or entire ships or satellites.

If nothing else, there is real estate. Might not be worth much, but there is a lot of it.

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Re:China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout by A2017U1 on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @01:30PM (#18913548)

> Maybe nothing worth shipping back to earth

Helium 3 is certainly worth shipping even at a premium.

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Re:China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout by RobLach on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @03:03PM (#18914473)

Unless there are widespread helium-3 fusion reactors, the demand for it is about $2000/liter for mostly scientific and imaging purposes. Even then it’s a sort of a niche driven price since when the US was willing to bother decaying tritium for it it was like $100 a liter.

Making a helium-3 fusion reactor is a tougher problem than mining on the moon. And even then making helium-3 on earth is cheaper than going to the moon to mine it.

Mining the moon for Helium-3 would be something someone would do once a colony is established, not a reason to establish one.

Probably the most lucrative thing to mine on the moon is water.

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Re:China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout by vkou on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @02:15PM (#18913964)

Moon-mined Helium 3 is currently a non-solution in search of a problem.

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