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Mining the Moon: What It’s Going to Take to Start a Lunar Economy
John Himes
November 7th, 2024
Once confined to science fiction, Moon mining is poised to become a reality. The incentives are there, and emerging technologies are making Moon mining not just possible but practical.
The opportunities presented by space resources are attracting the attention of some of the world’s brightest minds. While many are setting their sights on Mars, the asteroid belt, and beyond, the Moon is closer, resource rich, and Earth’s gateway to the Solar System.
As demand for key minerals grows and their supply becomes constrained by geopolitical tensions, advanced industries are seeking alternative sources.
Mining the Moon is undoubtedly a lofty goal. There are great risks. But, as the economics and technologies evolve, it’s becoming more feasible.
Why mine the Moon?
It comes down to two factors. The first is pure economics. The second is that mining the Moon will bootstrap a larger space economy.
Investors will need to see a return, even if it is far off on the horizon. The rising demand and falling supply of materials used for advanced manufacturing is approaching a tipping point. Opening up a new supply chain has huge long-term potential.
At the same time, investors will have to assess the technical readiness and risk of several technologies and prove out a financial model.
Generating cash flow by exporting valuable resources back to Earth is crucial, but that’s only one part of the larger opportunity. That cash flow will incentivize the first operations on the Moon, and those operations will create other opportunities for different organizations to come in around them and establish a larger lunar economy.
Just like mining and manufacturing in rural areas creates favorable conditions for retailers and service providers, the lunar economy may follow a similar trajectory.
NASA’s Artemis program is already bringing us closer to the Moon than we’ve been in decades. Its goals are to renew lunar science and discovery, get people back on the Moon, and explore opportunities for commercialization. Understandably, many companies are piggybacking on this public sector investment.
Humans will always have the drive to explore the next frontier and push the limits of possibility. They will also always follow economic incentives.
Right now, the space resources industry is bringing these two things together to create a self-sustaining ecosystem built on advanced technology and investor returns.
Key resources for the future are on the Moon
Let’s look at two of the main resources the industry is targeting.
Helium-3
Helium-3 is a rare and special isotope of the gas known for giving balloons their lift. But you’re much more likely to find it in a lab or a factory than at a kid’s birthday party.
Helium-3 is a key ingredient in next-generation technologies like nuclear fusion, medical imaging, and superconductors, which are essential for some types of quantum computers.
This resource’s high price per volume creates an opportunity for cash flow. Remember, it’s the promise of those returns that will bootstrap the entire lunar economy.
Extracting helium-3 has a clear value proposition. This opportunity is so compelling that one startup, Interlune, has raised $34 million to commercialize the technology.
Helium-3 is exceedingly rare. It is generally encountered as a byproduct of nuclear weapons tests, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decay. But, as of October 29, 2024, Gold Hydrogen claims to have discovered the isotope in South Australia.
Either way, between a limited supply and growing demand for advanced technology manufacturing, the already high price of helium-3 is expected to rise in the coming decades.
Rare earths
Besides helium-3, the Moon also contains a variety of rare earth metals with many industrial uses, especially in high-tech manufacturing.
These elements make modern technology possible. They go into the chips that power AI and other digital technologies. They are essential for many quantum and photonic technologies. And they’re also an important ingredient in powerful magnets and energy transition technologies.
Without rare earths, we can’t build smartphones, wind turbines, or other hardware that’s crucial to maintaining our country’s economic and security advantages.
In addition to being expensive and crucial for strategic industries, the rare earths supply chain is a major concern for the US. China controls current extraction and processing, and “the Chinese government has made it considerably harder for foreign companies, particularly semiconductor manufacturers, to purchase the many rare earth metals and other minerals,” reports the New York Times.
Mining the Moon for these resources could create a supply chain fully controlled by the US and our allies. At the same time, as the price of rare earths increases, being in the business will prove increasingly lucrative.
A report by the International Energy Agency notes that “rare earth elements may see three to seven times higher demand in 2040 than today.”
These metals are already expensive. As demand increases and China tightens supply, the ability to provide the market with a solution paves the way for returns on the significant capital required to develop space resources technology and bootstrap a lunar economy.
In-situ resources: Extracting, processing, and utilizing resources on the Moon
An economy can’t be supported by imports alone—especially when those imports originate from another world entirely.
In order to build out infrastructure and sustain economic activity on the Moon, we will need in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and the technologies that make it possible.
Basically, ISRU refers to extracting, processing, and using resources all in one place.
Think of it like homesteading on the Moon, except this way of “living off the land” comes with more robots. Especially for heavy and low-cost commodities like water and steel, ISRU is the only way to make the economics work.
Let’s start with water. Any human presence will obviously require it, but it’s also important for keeping the wheels of industry turning.
Extracting water on the Moon has applications beyond hydrating astronauts. Water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, and the resulting elements can then be used as feedstock for fuel production.
Any “gas station on the Moon” will have to start with water extraction. NASA describes a process for extracting and liquefying oxygen from lunar regolith (soil) and then combining the resultant oxidizer with lunar metals to create rocket fuel.
Water facilitates lunar economic development by sustaining life and fulfilling fuel needs, and it’s also used in washing and processing ore. Just as all mining and heavy industry on Earth relies on water, the same holds true in space.
ISRU will be important for constructing lunar infrastructure as well. Buildings, roads, and other hardware will have to be fabricated on the Moon, meaning we will need ways to harvest iron and process it into steel.
Other construction materials such as silicon for glass and aluminum for aerospace manufacturing will also need to be sourced and processed. Then construction can start, especially using technologies like additive manufacturing.
Emerging technologies that will unlock spaces resources and the lunar economy
Exciting innovations are close to turning cislunar mining into reality.
Individual technologies will prove critical to everything from extracting lunar resources to creating both the physical and IT infrastructure needed to operate in a challenging environment. But integration through systems engineering will be equally important.
Many of the brightest minds around the world are focused on this space race. It would be impossible to survey all of them here, so let’s take a look at what’s going on in Dynamic Tech Media’s neighborhood: Golden, Boulder, and the greater Denver – Colorado Springs – Fort Collins corridor.
Colorado tech companies to watch in the space resources and aerospace industries
Communications networks and flight dynamics are some of the first pieces that will need to fall in place. Advanced Space is spearheading this effort with their CAPSTONE satellite, which is trailblazing cislunar wayfinding and establishing peer-to-peer networking in cislunar space as part of the Artemis program.
Resilient position, navigation, and timing (PNT) is important for all space missions. But it’s particularly critical for Moon missions because of both the distance from ground support and the necessity of accurate navigation while on the far side of the Moon.
Quantum sensors, such as the chip-scale atomic clocks being developed by Mesa Quantum, will lay a foundation for PNT in cislunar space. Timing is a key prerequisite for all autonomous systems, both for spacecraft as well as for robotics and more on the lunar surface. Quantum technologies more broadly will certainly play a role in the overall advanced IT stack on the Moon.
We should also look at the tech ecosystem developing around Colorado School of Mines. Host to the first-ever graduate program in space resources, the Mines community is combining 150 years of knowledge in natural resource extraction with cutting-edge aerospace innovation to support a new generation of startups that are getting ready to go to the Moon.
One of these companies is Austere Environmental, who invented machinery to extract water from lunar regolith. As discussed above, water is key for ISRU because it sustains life, serves as feedstock for rocket propellant, and is necessary for most if not all heavy industry.
While Austere Environmental’s work and research began by targeting the Moon, they’re deploying their tech here on Earth first. They’re building solutions to reduce the environmental liability of heavy industry by separating petroleum from soil using methods similar to those they would use to separate water from regolith.
Their work shows investors the terrestrial value of R&D advancements otherwise aimed at cislunar extraction. By inventing technology designed for space resources, Austere developed a solution that reduces the environmental impact of heavy industry here on Earth while creating a near-term economic engine that can bankroll future investment.
Another Mines-based startup is the Orbital Mining Corporation, which is currently developing power systems that will fuel lunar industry. Their goal is to establish this foundational infrastructure so they can begin prospecting and mining activities.
Of course, all this hardware also has to actually get to the Moon in the first place. One player we’re keeping a close eye on is ispace – U.S., who is developing a lunar lander with a carrying capacity of 300kg. Their APEX 1.0 lander will also be able to deliver communication satellites and transport payloads to the far side of the Moon.
This is only a small slice of the landscape of tech companies building exciting products for the lunar economy. Everything from robotics to additive manufacturing to AI will play a role.
Those of us on the Front Range are fortunate to live and work in a collaborative ecosystem. This culture of cooperation will be invaluable in addressing the major challenges of systems integration in the future.
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Patience, foresight, collaboration, and ingenuity are the key ingredients
It’s easy to focus on the economic potential of Moon mining and the amazing innovations that will make it possible, but we can’t forget where it all starts.
It starts with us, the people on Earth. It starts with the inventors and engineers, the private investors, and the people who make up government agencies like NASA.
Mining the Moon won’t be easy. It’s going to take time. There will be failures.
The industry needs to remain resilient, focus on the long term, and equip innovative companies with the resources they need to succeed. That means access to capital, workforce development, and all the support functions that go into commercializing world-class technology.
One of those support functions is storytelling and marketing. With so much at stake, credibility is everything. Clear and professional communications for both technical and nontechnical audiences are needed to separate sci-fi hyperbole from grounded reality.
That’s why Dynamic Tech Media serves the space industry. We understand both the technologies and the economics, and we’re excited about this growing field.
Get in touch to learn more about our content creation and digital marketing services.
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