USA's Crazy Plan To Mine The Moon In 5 Years

october 4th 1957 the first artificial satellite sputnik 1 was launched into space by the ussr sending the first satellite into space was a breakthrough achievement for humanity and the beginning of a new era it was also the start of one of the most iconic battles in history between two superpowers it was the beginning of this space race as most historians agree the apollo 11 moon landing on july the 20th 1969 that put neil armstrong on the moon put an end to the space race despite the many successes that the soviet union had achieved but soon everything will change as the world starts a new race in space mining nations all over the world are thinking about mining the moon china india israel the usa russia all of them are trying to grab their own piece of the pie russia has already warned the usa against colonizing the moon and now tensions between countries are rising but is it really worth it and just what is on the moon that is so precious it's very possible that the moon could have large quantities of silicon titanium aluminium water precious metals and helium-3 today we'll focus on helium-3 and why it's so important for us [Music] luna missions from both the soviet union and the united states brought back lunar soil samples which were found to contain helium-3 the biggest reason we need helium-3 is that it could help free the entire world from dependence on fossil fuels having enough helium-3 could help us achieve clean energy produced by fusion power the most important discovery was the unique atomic structure of helium-3 and that it could be used as fuel for nuclear fusion a nuclear power plant uses a nuclear reactor to produce heat the water surrounding the reactor boils becoming steam which in turn rotates a turbine that produces electricity current nuclear reactors are using nuclear fission in which uranium nuclei has split apart besides releasing energy this reaction is also radioactive and the radioactive waste which is produced needs to be stored in special secured underground stores for more than 40 years researchers have been designing a different type of nuclear reactor which could potentially provide an environmentally acceptable and safe solution to our long-term energy problems in these reactors light gases such as the hydrogen isotopes tritium and deuterium are used as fuel instead of uranium and when the nuclei fuse a stable helium-4 isotope a neutron and atomic energy are created this reaction does not produce radioactivity and nuclear waste but there's a problem with this procedure the first neutron that's produced after the fusion is very difficult to contain and leads to a significant energy loss this is where helium-3 comes into play from a helium-3 and deuterium fusion there is no extra neutron created instead the byproducts a massive amount of atomic energy and a proton which is easier to contain and wastes less energy and on top of that the helium-3 deuterium reactions do not cause the surrounding material to become radioactive nuclear fusion reactors using helium-3 have the potential to provide a highly efficient form of nuclear power with no waste and no radiation the building of the first fusion reactor has already begun and in 2035 it's planned to be the world's first fully operational fusion reactor so we have 15 years to manage the lack of helium-3 but why do we need to go to the moon to extract helium-3 helium-3 is relatively rare on earth and is produced from the radioactive decay of tritium a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons but this isn't enough to supply us with what we need in fact helium-3 on earth has a very low natural abundance and a very high production cost helium-3 is emitted by the sun through solar winds but our atmosphere prevents any of this from getting to earth unlike earth which is protected by its magnetic field the moon has been bombarded with large quantities of helium-3 for billions of years by the solar wind it's been estimated that there are around one million two hundred thousand metric tons of helium-3 on the surface of the moon down to a depth of almost 10 feet this makes helium-3 100 million times more abundant on the moon than it is on earth and since solar wind gases are weakly bound in the lunar regolith it should also be relatively easy to extract them many scientists believe lunar deposits of helium-3 could provide us with all the power we need for 10 000 years researchers estimate that 25 tons of helium-3 which can fit in the cargo bay of one u.s shuttle craft could power the united states for an entire year this means helium-3 has a potential economic value of about 3 billion a ton making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the moon the potential benefits of helium-3 are massive and that's why the largest countries on the planet are planning to go to the moon to helium-3 the united states ambitious decade-long artemis plan promises a human landing in 2024 and the establishment of a moon base that will allow long-duration crew stays for scientific technological and economic purposes by 2028 furthermore there is an aspiration for a gateway to orbit the moon and serve as a jumping-off point for astronauts who want to explore earth's natural satellite this gateway is also envisioned to serve mars missions in the future this massive plan will entail 37 launches of private and nasa rockets and a mixture of robotic and human landers in 2019 the u.s space agency awarded contracts to private space tech firms for the construction of a few of the first pieces of hardware that will be required for this colossal mission such as the gateway platform and the lunar lander nasa wants to get back to the moon by 2024 with its artemis mission which will cost 35 billion dollars that's almost five percent of the us military defense budget for 2020 the steep cost of this expedition has been met with skepticism regarding the goal of getting humans on the moon by 2024 for now the u.s space agency plans to put the first humans on the moon before 2030 across the atlantic ross cosmos the russian federal space agency has been very eager to show the world their ambitious plans for the creation of a lunar orbiting space station and a lunar base their plan includes developing a new super heavy booster that can carry up to 113 tons of cargo to low orbit and 29 tons to the lunar pole orbit the russian lunar orbit flight is scheduled to take place in 2029 and russian cosmonauts will officially take their first steps on the moon in 2030 while the construction of the russian lunar base will begin in 2034. unlike the united states russia does not see the potential for industrial utilization of the celestial body instead they claim the role of their lunar station would be used as a defense against comets and asteroids not surprisingly china has been heavily investing in its lunar program while also researching the possibility of lunar mining their program took off in 2007 when china sent off a spacecraft to orbit the moon to collect data about the moon's geography by 2013 china successfully completed stage three of its lunar exploration program by soft landing their first probe u2 on january 3rd 2019 china's second lunar rover u22 landed on the moon and is now scanning the moon's far side incidentally china was also the first country to grow a plant on the moon inside the chang for probe on january 7th you can check out that video here or you can find that video link in the description in 2019 the chinese national space administration talked about their interest in building a lunar base of their own on the south pole of the moon in about 10 years while also planning to send off their first crude mission before this the scale and timing of china's lunar program can only highlight beijing's ambition to rival the united states and russia as a space power there's a big question regarding this who really owns the moon the outer space treaty was signed in 1967 by the united states russia and several other countries the outer space treaty doesn't ban military activities within space military space forces or the weaponization of space however it does prohibit the placement of weapons of mass destruction in space including nuclear weapons it also limits the use of the moon and all other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes only it states that space should be free for exploration and use by all nations but that no nation may claim sovereignty of outer space or any celestial body it's mostly a non-armament treaty but has no real regulations when it comes to luna and asteroid mining who will be the first to go to the moon and successfully mine it only time will tell for now we need to understand the future and that future is coming right now in a decade or so space mining will become a reality and all of us will witness history being made it'll be the beginning of a new age in humanity's history we've put a lot of effort into this video and we hope you enjoyed it [Music] you

Channel: Destiny

Views: 388,600

Keywords: moon, moon mining, moon landing, moon colonization, colonization, who owns the moon, Artemis program, artemis, Artemis program nasa, nasa, roskosmos, china moon landing, falcon-9, spacex, space race, mars colonization, Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, sputnik-1, china grow a plant on the moon, asteroid mining, kurzgesagt, kurzgesagt Asteroid mining, space mining

Id: fReeZh5B71c

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020