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It's entirely possible that whoever controls the Moon and it's helium3 reserves will be the dominant power on Earth

Fly Me to the Moon; Why Newt Gingrich was Right About a Return to the Moon



In a recent speech in Florida, Newt Gingrich proposed building a Moon base/colony, and was roundly mocked by critics, most especially by his chief opponent in the GOP Presidential race, Mitt Romney. Granted, the U.S. debt crisis and the stagnant economy make proposals for any expensive projects difficult, and space exploration yields no up-front returns. But is Newt necessarily wrong to call for a permanent U.S. presence on our nearest planetary neighbor?
The Russians don't think this is a pie-in-the-sky daydream. Neither do the Chinese. Why? Helium 3. The future of nuclear power is believed to lie not with fission of heavy elements but with fusion. A great deal of research has been done, and some breakthroughs made, in fusion research. But this fusion won't run on regular; it's going to require a designer blend. Helium 3 is an isotope of helium. Ordinary helium, well, perhaps it's easier to let this article explain:

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"Now, if you kick out one of the neutrons, you get helium-3. This happens once in a while in very energetic nuclear reactors, especially the sun. The sun produces helium by fusing hydrogen atoms together, but about one in every ten thousand helium atoms comes out missing a neutron. He3 casts lustful eyes upon that neutron in the deuterium, and will grab it if it gets a chance. We give it a chance by introducing the He3 to the deuterium at a high temperature. He3 is used in a reaction with deuterium to produce energy: D + He3 --> p(14.7 MeV) + He4 (3.7 MeV) + 18.4 MeV This is a nuclear fusion reaction. The deuterium and helium-3 atoms come together to give off a proton and helium-4. The products weigh less than the initial components; the missing mass is converted to energy. 1 kg of helium-3 burned with 0.67 kg of deuterium gives us about 19 megawatt-years of energy output. The fusion reaction time for the D-He3 reaction becomes significant at a temperature of about 10 KeV, and peaks about about 200 KeV. A 100 KeV (or so) reactor looks about optimum. A reactor built to use the D-He3 reaction would be inherently safe. The worst-case failure scenario would not result in any civilian fatalities or significant exposures to radiation." (Deuterium, by the way, is an isotope of hydrogen, one proton and one neutron..) And helium 3 is in scant supply on the Earth. BUT "In their 1988 paper, Kulcinski, et al. (see ref note below), estimate a total of 1,100,000 metric tonnes of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind in the lunar regolith. Since the regolith has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, we'll probably find He3 down to depths of several meters. The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria. To extract He3 from the lunar soil, we heat the dust to about 600 degrees C. We get most of the other volatiles out at the same time, so we'll be heating up the rocks anyway. (To get the oxygen out, we'll turn up the furnace to about 900 deg C and do some other nasty stuff; but that's a different story.)" Heating is easy on the moon; just use a mirror and some good, unfiltered sunlight. This will require men being actually present on the moon, or using some sort of teleoperating system, but it will require a lunar base. There is no way around that. What is the value of that Helium 3? "About 25 tonnes of He3 would power the United States for 1 year at our current rate of energy consumption. To put it in perspective: that's about the weight of a fully loaded railroad box car, or a maximum Space Shuttle payload. To assign an economic value, suppose we assume He3 would replace the fuels the United States currently buys to generate electricity. We still have all those power generating plants and distribution network, so we can't use how much we pay for electricity. As a replacement for that fuel, that 25-tonne load of He3 would worth on the order of $75 billion today, or $3 billion per tonne. The Payoff A guess is the best we can do. Let's suppose that by the time we're slinging tanks of He3 off the moon, the world-wide demand is 100 tonnes of the stuff a year, and people are happy to pay $3 billion per tonne. That gives us gross revenues of $300 billion a year. To put that number in perspective: Ignoring the cost of money and taxes and whatnot, that rate of income would launch a moon shot like our reference mission every day for the next 10,000 years. (At which point, we will have used up all the helium-3 on the moon and had better start thinking about something else.)"
There are other industrial and medical uses for helium 3, and the supply is diminishing worldwide. Given the great cost, it would be worth it to get to the moon and grab our share. Whoever sets up serious mining operations will become King Arab! And getting it off the moon is easy; a big slingshot to send it to Earth (or, more likely, a solar-powered mass driver, which is a magnetic levitation catapult; move your cargo up to the Lilliputian lunar escape velocity and let 'er fly!) Re-entry would be much like re-entry for an old Apollo capsule, then pick the cargo up in the Pacific. It ends up being cost-effective.

It's entirely possible that whoever controls the Moon and it's helium 3 reserves will be the dominant power on Earth

It's entirely possible that whoever controls the Moon and it's helium 3 reserves will be the dominant power on Earth. I've always been of the opinion that Ronald Reagan should have promoted a lunar colony rather than that largely useless space station, because the mass driver that gets the helium 3 into space can unload other ores, which can be used to construct anything you need. Build your space station from material mined on the Moon, which will be much cheaper in terms of transportation costs. And there's water on the Moon, which is precious up there. And unlimited power from sunlight. And hard vacuum for pharmaceuticals and rare metals. Let us not forget defense; the Moon is the high ground, and should, say, the Chinese colonize and we fail to do so they have a planet-sized gun platform hanging over our heads. They can attack us and we would be powerless to stop them. They could even throw rocks, and a rock coming from the moon would have the impact of an atomic bomb - and there would be little we could do to stop it except hit it with an bomb big enough to crack it apart. With a mass driver lobbing dozens we have a guaranteed hit on a major U.S. city. And we would have to accelerate any counter attack from the bottom of a hole to 39,897 km/h (24,791 mph), the maximum speed of an Apollo spacecraft. .

The Moon is our gateway to the solar system

The Moon is our gateway to the solar system, and if we don't go there and STAY there we will close the rest of the system to our exploration and settlement. It's not merely a matter of dreams, but of concrete business; there are materials we need from space and we can't afford to let others get it. Our competitors aren't content to let this stuff remain untouched. We are going to have to go after it to compete. There are other, more important matters at hand, too. Wars drive economic growth, and scientific development, and even cold wars can accomplish much. The U.S. spent a huge amount on the Cold War, and it drove our economy as well as led to enormous scientific advancement. Lunar settlement could have a similar effect. (Consider the spin-off technology from Teflon to GPS systems) It must be more than simple research, like the original NASA projects, but real development and permanent settlement. We need to get businesses on top of this right away; they have to be a large part of the project, not simply be subcontractors. We need to make space profitable. That is why governments have always opened frontiers; there is no way to make more money than you lose up front. There has to be a certain amount of infrastructure, even if minimal. The United States government was quite active in the settlement of the frontier in the U.S., which differentiated it from the Latin American countries, and from the Russians who could never get many settlers in Siberia because they couldn't supply what settlers needed. It was just too difficult to go and be completely cut off. The moon is like that today. In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner wrote his famous "Frontier Thesis" which argued that America was psychologically shaped by the presence of the frontier, which acted as a sort of safety valve to the public. Americans were optimistic and hopeful, constructive and ambitious, because they knew that a new start and a place of refuge waited for them over the horizon. It didn't matter if a person ever went to the frontier; just knowing it was there gave America a sense of hope. Turner argued that the closing of the frontier would drastically alter the American psyche, making Americans more like Europeans. History suggests he was right, because after the closing of the frontier America saw the rise of the Progressive era. The sense of self reliance ebbed as the nation became populated, settled, and law and regulation were imposed. Lunar settlement - and settlement through the solar system - offers a way to return America to the pre-closing period, to offer a new frontier that can be settled and can offer a psychological safety valve. Granted, this is a different frontier, and will require greater cooperation than was necessary in the Old West, but it will remain a frontier, and it should reach the point where, as a boom town, Lunar settlements will be bidding high for workers and settlers. Once there, new settlements will flourish. But the whole thing has to be started, and that requires the initial work of building heavy launch vehicles and creating the necessary infrastructure. Building infrastructure has been a traditional role of governments, like it or not. Even though governments may not do the actual work of building (think the Transcontinental Railroad, which was built by private concerns but was aided by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864) they still supply desperately needed help with financing, with support, with coordination of efforts, with supplies, etc. Governments have always built and run ports, and canals, and freeways. They have provided ranger stations, mail service, ferry services, and forts for military protection. This is a legitimate role of government. And with growth comes hope, something sorely lacking in the modern world. We live on a settled, organized, regulated, and pigeon-holed planet. Modern society offers little long-term hope, because it grows ever more intrusive, ever more powerful, ever more controlling, and there is no way to look to a future that is free. With the possibility of growth, of expansion, we have reason for hope. There is a massive frontier that can offer that hope; a whole planet hovers right over our heads. We need to go there, and stay. Mitt Romney, the very essence of modern Establishment thinking, is wrong to mock Newt Gingrich for looking beyond the immediate needs of the day. Yes, those needs are crucial, and we simply must get our national spending in order, but at what cost? The Chinese Empire had their own age of exploration but the needs of the day were too pressing and they retired from the seas. Ditto the Russians, who managed to build a world-girdling empire but never settled it because there was too much to do back home. (Now Russia appears set to lose her Asian lands to illegal Chinese immigrants.) It was the West, Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, that ended up settling the Western Hemisphere, Australia, New Zealand, and a even swaths of Africa. . It was the transplanted English in North America who colonized a continent. They did it because they never doubted the importance of such settlement. Unfortunately, too many in the West have reservations about "throwing money away in space" today. And the most vocal opponents of space exploration are the liberals, who see it as money wasted that could be put to better use - on social engineering experiments and controlling the population. The one thing any good Leftist/Progressive does not want is competition for their planned utopia. There can be no alternatives to their controlled environment. Space exploration will lead to space settlement, which will lead to competition. They prefer a world without challenge, a world without any prospect for anything that they don't have the power to give and to take away. Liberals fear and loathe the unknown and the uncontrolled. They naturally do not want us adventuring outward. They were the children who played in their playpens and did not try to venture forth. The men who built the American continent were the ones who were not content to stay in their cribs. Progressives hate and fear such men; they want a world that is predictable, organized, regulated, and safe. Frontiers are none of these. If the Left is victorious we will huddle in our despair and misery together, coequal in a diminishing world. They can't allow humanity to slip from their grasp into the wider universe. The Liberal/Progressives are largely triumphant in America and the West. Will our grandchildren look at the sky on summer nights and wonder why it is owned by Russians and Chinese? Will they ask their parents "why aren't WE there"? Will they huddle in their cold little cottages in winter, the ones built with eco-friendly materials and powered by wind turbines and solar cells that provide little heat or comfort, and shiver in the imposed chill of "sustainability" while dreaming of the bright and glorious life lived by others? Will our grandchildren dream of the Moon as children in Ghana or Bolivia dream of life in America today? And will the people living there speak Russian and Chinese, and no English is to be heard? Will we be a backwater living off ancient dreams of past glory while our more ambitious neighbors have a universe to settle?


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Timothy Birdnow -- Bio and Archives

Timothy Birdnow is a conservative writer and blogger and lives in St. Louis Missouri. His work has appeared in many popular conservative publications including but not limited to The American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Intellectual Conservative and Orthodoxy Today. Tim is a featured contributor to American Daily Reviewand has appeared as a Guest Host on the Heading Right Radio Network. Tim’s website is tbirdnow.mee.nu.


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