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Helium-3 mining on Moon: A new frontier for science and geopolitics
(interestingengineering.com)
I saw this movie...
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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For All Mankind
They said movie. It was Moon (2009) directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell.
Amazing movie. I'm never watching it again.
rewatched it with the kiddos the other day. stands up well. rockwell's performance is underappreciated.
Rockwell is a great actor, can't recall any bad performances from him. He even managed to get some good performance as Hammer in the disaster named Iron Man 2.
I loved it too. And also had the same thought. It is atmospheric, a slow burn, captivating. In the end not much actually happened. So I am not compelled to see it again.
Sam R is one of several GOAT actors however.
No it was the remake of the Time Machine with Guy Pierce, mining on the moon destroyed its orbit and it breaks up.
No it was Seveneves, which was a book, and the moon just kind of blow up for some reason.
No, it was Iron Sky (2012), with the Swastika-shaped lunar base.
... Let's not give Elon any ideas.
For All Mankind
Do
/* loop body*/
Done
What?
Moon
Please demonstrate working and economic terrestrial energy generation using He-3 fusion first.
Yeah, that's the thing. He-3 is a second generation fusion technology. We don't even have net power positive first generation fusion.
Great when we get there, but there are steps we need first.
Lunarians can never go back to Earth because their bones will be so weak...
If the industrial base is there you could build an angled gyroscope to add the necessary gravity. Although realistically much of the processing and shipping would be automated anyway. Unless AI gets really good some humans would still be necessary for oversight but reasonably with only a couple of seconds time delay that could be done from Earth.
If we were doing asteroid mining out in the belt that would definitely require some sort of habitat though. Agqin, assuming we don't get AGI or uploading humans to software or something like that.
Yet another reason we'll never move into space. That's where Bio of a Space Tyrant gets it right. Humans are able to harness gravity and make it variable. If we could do that, 95% of solar system exploration issues are magically gone.
Iron Sky!
Remember when the idea of the nazis coming back was still funny?
Oh no
SoyjacksPointing.jpg Netrunner irl?
Hey, I played this game once.
The launch to 23 seconds was the greatest game ever. So many incredible designs, leading to incredible moments. I'm still using my day job playmat for winter 2015 as a giant mousepad.
Then they fucked it up with board wipes and resource hate, and unconditional tagging.
Time to fire up Anno 2205
It's been a bit since I watched Moon. Fantastic film about the future moon miner.
New frontier, my sweaty arse.
I was reading about helium-3 mining in the same magazine for children where I was reading about "The Mummy" filming process, genetically modified small tigers as pets in the future, reconfigurable clothes made of nanobots, aliens and Median state.
Or maybe in a bit different one, both were cool, one was more "popular science" minded, another was yellowish, but entertaining. The former was called "Young erudite", the latter "Miracles and mysteries of the planet Earth". Honestly I think I'm going to look them up, if they are still printed. Perhaps get a subscription.
EDIT: Forgot to say the latter magazine for kids had its last issue released in year 2010. Which was the point of my comment, nothing new in talking about mining helium-3.
We cannot be fucking with our moon, else we will shoot our own ecosystems in the foot.
All the moon does it control the tide.
It's a barren irradiated, lifeless rock.
Short of blowing it up, to my knowledge there is virtually nothing we could do on said moon that would affect us at all on earth.
All the moon does it control the tide.
Yah!! 😜 That's not all though, surely.
We could lower the entire lunar surface by several meter and not have a dent in the tidal effect