Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy::A number of entrepreneurial groups have shared their strategies to turn the moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.
Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy::A number of entrepreneurial groups have shared their strategies to turn the moon into a hustle and bustle world of marketable services.
The difference is, there is no natural life to kill on the moon, and if it turns out to be possible, maybe even easier, to mine for necessary metals on the moon then Earth-side mining won’t be necessary
Also, being able to get resources on the moon without having to ship them there from Earth will make it much easier and cheaper to launch spaceships to the rest of the solar system.
So I have two questions from that.
How much mass can we remove from the moon until we affect it’s rotation around earth?
What will the ecological impact on earth be if a dozen companies start launching rockets at the moon on a regular basis?
Mining enough to alter the orbit of the moon would require a pretty ridiculous amount of time and effort. Much more than our global mining efforts combined and multiplied and on a timescale of thousands of years.
And we only have to launch a few rockets, enough to set up a self-sufficient base which can then produce more rockets and fuel from resources on site. Not to mention it’s much easier, and even feasible with existing materials, to build a space elevator on the moon.
But then we need to get the resources back to earth… probably multiple launches per week.
Well, first off, if the rocket launches from the moon, is that such a bad thing? Any exhaust would remain on the moon. Not to mention that lunar rockets are much much smaller than earth rocket. Secondly, we probably wouldn’t use rockets for it, we would probaby use a lunar space elevator to skip the lift stage entirely and just have enough thrust to move the payload into an orbit that eventually gets to the Earth. Or we could use a mass driver, a massive coilgun that magnetically propels payloads to speeds that let it fall down to Earth in one go. For none of these do we need an Earth launch, the payload just needs to be picked up after falling to the Earth. With maths and timing you could probably designate a single landing area on Earth that all lunar payloads fall into.
Would it not be super cool to have all those minerals until we have extracted that much from the moon that it’s orbit becomes unstable and then spirals into earth?
First, figure out how much the Moon weighs. The find out how much we mine form the Earth each year.
Second, the impact of dozens of flights a day will be much less than the impact of mining the Earth