Allrighty, I know, if I am going to get irritated by the ignorance of human beings, I shouldn’t read Slashdot. A recent article detailed China’s desire to
mine the moon for minerals. Never mind that it is absurd (can we name a single element so precious that it would justify the cost of rocket launches to bring it back from the moon. I would have expected someone to bring up that. But no, instead we get gems like the following.
Any of those more versed in physics than myself care to comment on what lowering the mass of the moon could do? I am sure not enough would be mined to raise the mass of the earth enough to cause problems, but wouldn’t a great enough reduction in lunar mass decrease the force of gravity between the earth and the moon, thus (possibely) destabilizing the orbit?
Sigh. Or how ’bout:
Presumably when they talk about “mining the moon” they are talking about going there to mine Helium 3. This is an isotope of helium which, if available in abundance, would be a perfect fuel for clean fusion power generation.
Except of course that nobody has built a working, controllable fusion reactor.
Economically this just doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to imagine the level of technology to make it make sense. Even the most difficult to mine natural resources of this planet will be cheaper to recover
than any resource from the moon or asteroids. Lunar mining is a pipe dream.
Ah, but consider this: there are 1 billion plus people in China. If they stood head to foot then that will get them out to 1.5 million km, let’s say, assuming that the Chinese are not all as tall as Yao Ming (I certainly ain’t). Although that won’t get them to the Sun, it will certainly get them to the moon. They could even double up with plenty of room to spare and create two lines of bucket chains. Voila, problem solved.
Or if they don’t want to do that, everyone in China could jump up and down and knock the Earth out of orbit enough to bring it closer to the Moon. Or something.