Can we mine the Moon?

The prospect of a permanent lunar base has certainly excited astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a veteran of the Apollo 17 mission. Nowadays Schmitt is a geologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and chairman of Interlune Intermars which raises money to develop lunar mining.

President Bush’s announcement included references to the moon’s “abundant resources”, but Schmitt and his co-prospectors are primarily interested in one: helium-3. Helium deposits are scarce on Earth, and the isotope helium-3 is even rarer. Nevertheless, it is valuable in medical diagnostics, and researchers developing nuclear fusion reactors as a future solution to terrestrial power generation will use helium-3 by the bucket load.…