China wants to mine minerals on the Moon – but would it be economically viable?

#miningtheMoon #uranium #thorium #China #helium3 In a report of November 2013 it was revealed that China wants to mine minerals on the Moon – this had been indicated by Prof Ouyang Ziyuan of the department of lunar and deep space exploration of China. In his opinion, The Moon holds exotic materials including helium-3 and the potential for solar power could prove invaluable for humankind once efforts succeeded to tap solar energy from the Moon and use it on Earth.
He was speaking before the first Chinese attempt to land an unmanned spacecraft Chang'e 3 lander on the lunar surface. It would be the first to make a soft touchdown on the Moon since an unmanned Russian mission in 1976 and, incidentally, no humans have set foot on the lunar surface since the end of America's Apollo missions in 1972.
However, Prof Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College, London has his reservations on the subject. He feels that the moon may offer pay dirt with a rewarding mother lode of resources, a celestial gift that is literally up for grabs but what about the cost?
He believes that it is no secret that the moon has an abundance of raw materials that are of potential economic interest but, it is difficult to identify any single lunar resource that will be sufficiently valuable to drive a lunar resource extraction industry on its own.
Useful items that could be mined from the Moon are helium-3, rare earth elements like uranium and thorium, and high-value platinum-group elements. The need would be to first discover locations where sufficient stocks are available and then go in for drilling, excavation, extraction and processing operations to retrieve and transport them to Earth for utilization of those resources. It is, no doubt, a tall order.