Foreign Policy: "Is there money on the Moon?"

Five to ten kilometer resolution map of Thorium, related to the lunar surface in parts per million by Japan's lunar orbiter Kaguya. While many have long noted the practical mineral wealth on the Moon, as Joshua E. Keating draws those threads together below, the Moon's most valuable resource is probably still its proximity and its volatiles just outside Earth's gravity well.

Joshua E. Keating
Foreign Policy Blog

In a new article for Foreign Policy, John Hickman ponders what the political ramifications might be if China were to declare sovereignty over a swath of territory on the moon, triggering a lunar land grab. But what about the economics of this extraterrestrial Great Game? Maintaining a permanent manned presence on the moon is an awfully pricey undertaking just to make a political statement. Is there any way to make some money from mining the moon's riches?

Possibly, but it's a long-term investment. The biggest cheese on the moon is probably helium-3, an isotope that's abundant in the moon's regolith, but rare and getting rarer here on Earth. Helium-3 is currently used mostly for scientific research, but some see it as a future source for non-radioactive fusion power. Unfortunately, the United States and Soviet Union exhausted much of the world's supply during Cold War-era nuclear tests. Several private companies, including Silicon Valley's Moon Express, are exploring the development of helium-3 mining on the moon and governments including India and Russia have discussed the possibility. (It's also the basis of the plot for the 2009 movie Moon.)

It's hard not to be enticed by the numbers. Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, estimated when contacted by Foreign Policy that given the potential energy of a ton of helium-3 (the equivalent of about 50 million barrels of crude oil) and the estimated amount of recoverable helium-3 (around 75,000 tons, or 15 percent of the total amount on the moon) we could be looking at around $375 trillion worth of the stuff.

Read the full Foreign Policy blog post HERE.

"To read more about China's lunar ambitions, click HERE."

Transparent aluminum

"Hello, Computer." - Lt. Comdr. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), UFP Starfleet, fails in an attempt to voice-operate a late-20th century Turing machine, mistaking the cursor-pointer "mouse" for a hand-held microphone. "Scotty" is about to divulge the molecular model of transparent aluminum after the stunned local materials manufacturer (Alex Henteloff-center) offering to trade the information in return for services. The deal will make him "wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice," according to "Scotty's fellow AWOL Starfleet officer Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). This clear violation of Time Protocol will enable timely construction of a saltwater aquarium on-board a Klingon battle cruiser, parked and cloaked in nearby San Francisco; for the purposes of transporting a mating pair of humpback whales to the 23rd century. ("Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," Paramount Pictures, 1986.)

A New State of Matter

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

In this week’s Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.

'What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start.

Read the full article, HERE.

Igniting Fusion

Ground zero: A circular access port affords a glimpse into a 10-meter-diameter target chamber where, in the coming months, powerful lasers will be fired with the goal of setting off small thermonuclear explosions.
(See more images.) Credit: Jason Madara

Researchers at a the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California will soon attempt to start self-sustaining fusion reactions using the world's largest lasers. If it works, it could be a first step on the road to abundant fusion power.

Kevin Bullis
MIT Technology Review
July-August 2009

It's late April and workers are assembling the last parts of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a sprawling building covering the area of three football fields at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA. Dressed in hard hats, hair nets, lab coats, and latex gloves, they have gathered at the target chamber, a sphere 10 meters in diameter and bristling with 48 burnished-aluminum ducts that together house 192 separate laser beams. Each beam on its own is one of the world's most powerful, says Bruno Van Wonterghem, operations manager at NIF. Together they deliver 50 to 60 times the energy of any other laser.

Read the Article HERE.

NIF demonstrates Super Laser

The National Ignition Facility has demonstrated it's Super Laser for the first time, showing the real potential for sustained fusion, materials, and a host of applications for astrophysics and engineering.

From Breitbart : NIF is touted as the world's highest-energy laser system. It is located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about an hour's drive from San Francisco.

Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.

NIF will be able to create conditions and conduct experiments never before possible on Earth, according to the laboratory.

A fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," according to NIF director Edward Moses.

"This is the long-sought goal of 'energy gain' that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century," Moses said.

"NIF's success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance; the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on Earth the processes that power the stars."

Construction of the NIF began in 1997, funded by the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

"NIF, a cornerstone of the National Nuclear Security Administration's effort to maintain our nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing, will play a vital role in reshaping national security in the 21st century," said NNSA administrator Tom D'Agostino.

"This one-of-a-kind facility is the only place in the world that is capable of providing some of the most critical technical means to safely maintain the viability of the nation's nuclear stockpile."

Scientists say that NIF also promises groundbreaking discoveries in planetary science and astrophysics by recreating conditions that exist in supernovas, black holes, and in the cores of giant planets

Electricity derived from fusion reactions similar to what takes place in the sun could help sate humanity's growing appetite for green energy, according to lab officials.

"Very shortly we will engage in what many believe to be this nation's greatest challenge thus far, one that confronts not only the nation but all of mankind -- energy independence," said lab director George Miller.

The lab was founded in 1952 and describes itself as a research institution for science and technology applied to national security.

"This laser system is an incredible success not just for California, but for our country and our world," Schwarzenegger said.

"NIF has the potential to revolutionize our energy system, teaching us a new way to harness the energy of the sun to power our cars and homes."

ITER scaled back - Big Fusion delayed

According to a report in Nature, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under development since 1989 and construction since 2006, has been formally scaled back because of cost overruns.

Geoff Brumfiel reports from the 40 hectare construction site at St Paul-lez-Durance in France, the "international experiment boldly aiming to prove atomic fusion as a power source — will initially be far less ambitious than physicists had hoped, Nature has learned."

"Faced with ballooning costs and growing delays, ITER's seven partners are likely to build only a skeletal version of the device at first. The project's governing council said last June that the machine should turn on in 2018; the stripped-down version could allow that to happen, but the first experiments capable of validating fusion for power would not come until the end of 2025, five years later than the date set when the ITER agreement was signed in 2006."

"The new scheme, known as 'Scenario 1' to ITER insiders, will be discussed on 17–18 June in Mito, Japan, at a council meeting that will include representatives from all seven members: the European Union (EU), Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States, China and India. It is expected to be approved at a council meeting in November.

"Indeed, the plan is perhaps the only way forward. Construction costs are likely to double from the €5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER's operations phase, another €5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.

"In fact, the ultimate cost of ITER may never be known. Because 90% of the project will be managed directly by individual member states, the central organization has no way of gauging how much is being spent, says Norbert Holtkamp, ITER's principal deputy director-general. "They won't even tell us," he says. "And that's OK with me."

"Holtkamp says that the only way to get ITER built is to do the skeletal version first. Before scaling up to do energy-producing experiments, he says, "you really need to know whether the major components work. It's absolutely clear that this is the right approach." As to why Scenario 1 is being touted only now, Holtkamp says it took him time after joining the project to review the original schedule."

"Fusion researchers say that Scenario 1 is preferable to the alternative: a permanent smaller machine that would never produce significant amounts of power. "You can't build a half ITER because then you'll just go on and on not quite knowing what the answer is," says Steven Cowley, director of the UK Atomic Energy Authority's fusion laboratory at Culham."

The full Article can be read HERE.