The Moon’s replacement for fossil fuels?

Many observers missed something in NASA’s 200-point mission goals for the new lunar base, but not those guys over at WIRED.

Turns out the moon is likely to have large amount of Helium-3, which is an ideal fuel for futuristic fusion reactors.AA These reactors are at least 50 years away, but could provide an unbelievable amount of power and without the safety and environmental hazards that current nuclear reactors have, "The isotope is extremely rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. Some experts estimate there a millions of tons in lunar soil — and that a single Space-Shuttle load would power the entire United States for a year."

Some excerpts:
"NASA plans to have a permanent moon base by 2024, but America is not the only nation with plans for a moon base. China, India, the European Space Agency, and at least one Russian corporation, Energia, have visions of building manned lunar bases post-2020."

"Russian space geologist Erik Galimov told the Russian Izvestia newspaper that NASA’s plan to colonize the moon will ‘enable the U.S. to establish its control of the global energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out.’"

Make sure to check out the whole article:

Story via WIRED

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Posted: December 15th, 2006
at 7:58am by Pheezatron


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  1. [...] Sound familiar?  myninjaplease featured this story a few months back, after the release of NASA’s new lunar plans. [MNP] Social Bookmark This Post:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

     


 

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