• Question: is it possible and feasible to make a moon mining facility?

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Yes – just this year NASA invited applications from companies interested in building robots able to mine minerals from the moon. So maybe in the not-so-far future this will happen!

    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      It’s certainly possible. What it ultimately comes down to is, is it profitable, and that’s likely to be a big no for some time.

      It takes a HUGE amount of energy to get equipment to the moon, so setting up a facility would cost a fortune. It’s also unclear that there’s anything particularly valuable to mine there.

      You’ve then got to move whatever you’ve mined (probably after you’ve refined it – more set up costs) back to earth. This is a lot easier than getting stuff to the moon, as there’s less gravity to escape from, but its still pretty expensive.

      If someone discovered some natural resource on the moon, that was sufficiently valuable to make it worthwhile, I suspect we’d have have mines on the moon pretty quickly!

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