http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011124/sc/minerals_moon_dc_1.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Space, the last frontier remaining to be truly explored
and exploited by man. Vast mineral riches are believed to lie in its cold
depths, especially on the moon -- an untapped resource just waiting for its
first commercial landing.
Could it ever be possible to replenish the earth's supplies of gemstones and
little-known rare metals such as osmium and rhodium by sending humans, or
even robots, into space to set up mining ventures on the inhospitable surface
of the moon?
An increasing number of private firms see no reason to wait for the world's
governments to take the lead and are racing to launch their own space mining
missions.
``Governments have no reason to go back to the moon. They've been there,
there's no political reason to go back. But there are a lot of private
reasons to go back,'' said Ian Randal Strock, a director of U.S.-based
Artemis Society International (ASI).
ASI is helping sponsor a project to build a commercial manned moon base and
plans its first lunar flight in the next 10 years. According to Strock,
technology is not the problem -- rather, just how to raise the massive
amounts of cash required.
``If we had sufficient money, then it's just a matter of getting the pieces
together, getting a launch and we're there. The big delay in any project to
the moon is funding,'' he said.
``We're looking at $1.5 billion for that first flight,'' he said. ``We have
four companies up and running and making money, and we're looking to send up
a robotic camera in two years.''
The United Nations (news - web sites)' 1979 Moon Treaty, one of several
international outer space agreements, attempted to define the scope of
private space activity. However, it was never ratified by some major powers
such as Russia and the United States.
The treaty stipulated that any wealth obtained from the moon by any
space-faring nation was to be distributed to all the people of the world. One
clause, referring to space resources as the ``common heritage of mankind,''
has been taken by private firms as legitimizing efforts to mine on the moon
and asteroids.
The handful of private firms competing to be the first to establish
commercial lunar mining are convinced of a lucrative market for whatever they
might eventually ship back to Earth.
To back up their claims, they cite a famous sale of Russian lunar samples
held at a New York Sotheby's auction in 1993, where a pebble of moon rock
weighing less than one carat fetched an astounding $442,000, or $2,200 a
milligram. According to Applied Space Resources (ASR), a moon mission costing
less than $100 million could return a quantity of lunar material with enough
demand in the marketplace to make the return on investment attractive to
financial backers.
A private company based in New York state, ASR aims to send an unmanned
spacecraft to an unexplored region of the moon and return the first lunar
samples to earth in more than 25 years.
``We have been at this for four years now -- we can do this technologically
and we believe that the market exists,'' said Denise Norris, ASR's president.
``The biggest hurdle is that we need about three to three and a half years to
integrate everything.
``If everything moves on schedule, we would be launching within five years,''
she said, adding that ASR would soon be looking for $4 million in financing.
SCARCE METALS
Scientists believe the elements making up most of the earth are also present
on the moon and make up most of its composition. Analysis of lunar rock
samples indicates a wide variety of elements, with oxygen and silicon being
relatively plentiful.
Germanium, molybdenum, tungsten, rhenium and gold rank among the rarer metals
present, in small percentages. Cobalt, nickel, iron, aluminum, magnesium,
manganese, calcium, sodium and titanium also feature.
But of more immediate commercial interest are the six elements known as the
Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) -- iridium, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhodium
and ruthenium.
Among the world's scarcest metals, the PGMs possess unique chemical and
physical qualities that make them vital industrial materials. They are
especially valued for their catalytic functions, conductivity and resistance
to corrosion. ``There are certain minerals and precious metals that we are
going to find where the supply is going to drop off soon,'' said ASR's
Norris. ''I believe that the platinum group metals are going to be a real
problem on earth, with fuel-cell technology.''
Fuel-cells, which are being developed to operate without fossil fuels, use
around 10 times more platinum than internal combustion engines, mainly as a
catalyst. If they were to be in widespread use, platinum demand would rocket.
Norris added, ``but it'd be extremely foolish to say we're going to make a
ton of money selling platinum group metals here. The resources are there and
there's a lot of stuff up there,'' she said, adding that this was mostly from
asteroid impacts on the moon.
PRACTICAL PROBLEMS
However, the daunting number of practical problems facing a would-be moon
miner may prove insurmountable, scientists say.
The largest obstacle is the lack of water, used in large quantities in most
earth mining operations but only believed to exist as ice at the lunar poles.
Water has been responsible for shaping the earth with its alluvial strata and
mineral deposits.
Notwithstanding a similar lack of oxygen, which does exist on the moon but is
bound up in compounds that are hard to break down, the low-gravity situation
means that robotic mining would probably be more sustainable than sending
humans into space.
``Nobody is going to think of doing (moon) mining with human beings,'' said
Richard Taylor, a council member of the British Interplanetary Society.
``We aren't going to have little men with tin hats holding picks in their
hands,'' he said. ``All this exploitation of asteroid material will be
robotic and remote.''
Finding the actual mineral deposits could also prove tricky.
While the earth concentrates minerals in specific areas by dint of volcanic
eruptions, the moon is volcanically inactive so new ways of locating minerals
would have to be found.
So far, there is little hard evidence about in what form or where minerals
are found on the moon, although scientists have made educated guesses based
upon studies of lunar soil and rock samples.
``What you want is a means of establishing what exists where, and whether
there are local concentrations. That requires very comprehensive mineral
mapping,'' Taylor said.
``The moon has a semi-molten core but we're not going to see crystal
formation or those types of veining that you would see on the earth with
precious metals,'' said ASR's Norris. ``There is no crystallization in the
same way that we see on earth.''
EXORBITANT COSTS
Apart from the serious practical problems involved with any activity on the
lunar surface, the first obstacle for companies looking to mine on the moon
is cost -- and return on investment.
Experts say the cost of transporting items into space is exorbitant, ranging
between $2,000 and $3,000 per pound of weight, meaning that any lunar bases
would really have to be able to procure their necessities from space.
``If there was a layer of gold a foot thick floating over the earth at an
altitude at which we could send up a shuttle to go up and collect, it
wouldn't be worth doing it,'' said Taylor.
``This is for the simple reason that it would cost more per gram to go up and
bring the gold back than the gold would actually fetch,'' he said. ``And a
lot of these metals have high values on earth only because they are rare.''
The real key to lunar mining, Taylor said, was to reduce the cost of sending
a craft into space so that its operators could afford to have a vehicle which
went up partially empty into space and came back
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