re: #638 Cato the Elder

If the Chinese want to live on the moon, let ‘em. We’ll see how that works out.

As for helium-3, “The irradiation of lithium in a nuclear reactor - either a fusion or fission reactor - can produce many kilograms of tritium if desired, and helium-3 after decay.”

But a moon mine would be so much cooler! Right?

I wouldn’t advocate permanently manned moon bases, I don’t want Heinlein’s Loonies. (Unless there are people who want to and volunteer to be “Low-G Adapts”) I know that would be a one way trip. Nothing saying that you cannot have rotating crews, and frankly it would be small crews just to maintain the robots doing the mining I’m sure.

On that note, the fact that there is not a rotating section on the current space station to simulate at least .5-.8g, I find asinine but I digress…

That bit about lithium… That is how He3 is produced now, and if it was that great no one would be advocating going to the moon to get it. Unless the scientists on the Discovery channel special about current fusion efforts who talk about this issue are LYING, it’s cheaper to mine it on the moon than to get it in the manner you speak of. They said as of now it is the only thing worth going to space to bring back as it would pay for any mission to go get it multiple times over. But they could be lying about it of course.