Going to the moon just like that, it's a purely political decision. Stick a flag, take photos and videos, don't lose them thanks to modern digital technologies. But is this what it is worth investing billions of dollars and the efforts of many people?
US Vice President Mike Pence said in April 2019 that after a new American landing on the moon, now scheduled for 2024, preparations will begin to create a permanent lunar base, and in two forms at once: the orbital LOP-G and the ground one. But again, this promises us only temporary business trips, exclusively for scientific purposes, which do not promise direct benefits.
It takes more than political will and a desire to win the next space race for people to start "developing" the moon seriously. It is necessary that the prospect of a highly profitable business appears, and then money will be invested in the Moon, and commercial bases, drilling stations will appear on the surface of Selena, and caravans of spacecraft with specialists and mined minerals will be pulled in both directions. But can we see all this splendor anytime soon? Many science fiction writers are trying to answer this question, and today we will tell you about the most interesting projects of lunar startups of the future.
On the paper
The theme of the use of the moon appears in science fiction at an enviable frequency. Writers over and over again offer different options for using the earth's satellite. It is logical, because humanity is damn lucky with him. Like a winning lottery ticket, we got a unique natural satellite complete with the planet. A location close enough to the Earth, a comfortable surface and a trajectory of movement seemed to have specially created it for training future interplanetary flights. If it doesn't work with the Moon, then it's not worth talking about the colonization of Mars and more distant corners of the solar system.
Most recently, Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "Red Moon", about the colonization of the moon and Chinese space expansion, was released. On the one hand, it describes very well and fully the future lunar bases and the life of "commercial" colonists, people sent to the moon on a business trip by their companies. However, the very economy of the existing Selene commercial activity is not described. Cash flows and on what funds the lunar infrastructure described in the novel exists for several tens of thousands of people is not very clear.
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Judging by the current trends, such activities are hardly available even to the united world community. Even the joint ownership of the International Space Station causes a huge amount of controversy and speeches by opposition politicians who believe that it is too expensive for the budget of their countries. Therefore, the lunar station can probably exist only under one very clear condition - it will be commercially profitable.
More fuel needed
One of the solutions was proposed by the American science fiction writer David Pedreira in his book "Powder Moon". He used the long-standing idea of extracting helium-3 on the Moon. This is one of the two isotopes of helium, it is practically not found on Earth, its total amount on our planet is estimated at only 35,000 tons, which is very small and its extraction is extremely difficult.
But on the Moon with helium-3 everything is in order. Helium-3 is released during the reactions taking place on the Sun, and then is carried by the solar wind in all directions. The helium-3 that enters the Earth's atmosphere quickly dissipates, but on the surface of the Moon, which has only an extremely thin layer of the exosphere, it was deposited for millions of years. According to various estimates, only the surface layer of the Moon contains from 500,000 to 2.5 million tons of helium-3.
How can Helium-3 be used? In theory, there are a lot of options. One of the ideas most frequently encountered in the literature is as fuel for fusion reactors. According to the calculations of specialists in thermonuclear fusion, when 1 ton of helium-3 with 0.67 tons of deuterium enters the reaction, energy is released equivalent to the combustion of 15 million tons of oil. In addition, helium-3 can become one of the propellants for rockets launched from the lunar surface. The theoretical possibility of such use is often cited when talking about the future colonization of the moon.
By the way, helium-3 was used as fuel for launch vehicles in the classic manga and anime Planetes. Space debris collectors working in Earth orbit fly on it. Spaceships in the Mass Effect series also work great on helium-3, although the question of its production is not even raised there.
It is as a fuel source that helium-3 is used in Pedreira's novel. True, in order to substantiate the emerging need for the extraction of helium-3 on the Moon, the author had to arrange a large-scale catastrophe on the Earth's surface. David Pedreira is a science journalist and understood that otherwise the logic of mining this isotope on the Moon disappears. For the time being, the leading powers peacefully divide the territory of the earth's satellite. But after the first murder in the history of the Moon, the situation escalates and the prospect of a war for Selena arises. A similar decision was made by the creators of the science fiction film "Moon 2112" - in it, the need for complex production of helium-3 on the Moon is due to an earthly energy crisis of a catastrophic scale. In reality, things are sadder than in fantasy. Thermonuclear reactors for generating energy from helium-3 are not yet even in the project. Furthermore,there are not even much simpler reactors of this type. The first international experimental thermonuclear reactor, which was supposed to start working in 2016, alas, is still under construction. Recently, the date of its creation was postponed again, now to 2025.
Fortunately, there is no global energy crisis on Earth either. Leaving aside the anti-nuclear lobby, the problem of safe energy production can be closed without the use of thermonuclear reactors, much less the production of helium-3 on the Moon. In the meantime, helium-3 is used on Earth only to fill gas neutron detectors in military and scientific laboratories. Huge amounts of this isotope have nowhere to go.
In addition, there are no deposits of helium-3 on the Moon - the entire isotope is spread almost in a uniform layer over 38 million square kilometers of the Moon's surface. And what is even worse - not on the surface itself, but located at a depth of four to ten meters below it, covered by a layer of regolith. In order to extract it, it will be required, almost literally, to sift millions of cubic meters of lunar rock. That is, practically shaking up the entire moon, and this is very, very expensive.
Other options
Well, if it doesn't work with helium-3, then what else is left? How to make the moon commercially attractive? So far, the most promising options are the extraction of water on the Moon and its subsequent splitting into hydrogen and oxygen, as well as the extraction of other minerals, for example, silicon.
In 1958, Arthur Radebauch, author of popular science comics for the Chicago Tribune, even dedicated his mini-comic Closer Than We Think to it. Alas, it turned out to be no closer. So far, lunar mining is a rather distant fantasy. There are many technical problems to be solved before the first shipment of minerals is delivered from the Moon.
This is the question of the delivery of geological equipment, and the extraction itself, and the return delivery of valuable resources to Earth. And judging by the cost of minerals on Earth, the payback of such an enterprise will be a very big question. Andy Weier, in his second novel, Artemis, showed an entire lunar city living on the production of energy and sending minerals to Earth. Unfortunately, the author was much more interested in the technical details of the functioning of such a settlement than in the realistic economic model behind the colonization. Often in science fiction, after the colonization of the moon, the tourism industry begins to actively operate on it. For example, it was around her that Arthur Clarke built the plot of the novel "Moon Dust" - in the center of the story are tourists who have to fight for survival afterhow their dust ship is buried beneath the surface of the satellite. Of course, space tourism can become an additional source of income for the commercial exploration of the Moon, but it will clearly not be enough to recoup the entire enterprise.
Conclusion
Despite the variety of ideas, there are currently not many realistic lunar business projects that could be profitable in the foreseeable future. Probably, with the development of the field of close space travel, more and more projects will begin to gain momentum - and who knows, maybe it is the writers who will come up with the most interesting of them?
Mikhail Kotov