MAIN ARTICLE: How the Moon could fuel World Wars.
Page 2: NASA, Russia sign contract extension
Page 3: This Week in Science
Poll Results: Yesterday's poll had a lower than average turnout but almost half said "where do I sign?".
Star Trek: In the News. Star Trek Sequel Talk & Some Awesome Concept Art
Yesterday's Comments: "Water, Not so much. Discover oil and Mars would have oil rigs springing up all over the place before you could say "shouldn't we think about this?" " - LaFeminista
Today's Poll: Saturday in Space - Weekly Tracking Poll on space funding.
WORLDS AT WAR:
How the Moon could fuel World Wars
"Forty years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon, a new space race is opening up. Next time the flags are planted, though, it won't be Cold War one-upmanship that's at stake but a 'miracle power source of the future', Helium-3. But while the world's major powers rush to secure the valuable fuel, many are concerned what damage will be done.
Who owns the Moon? The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says no one owns it and that it's 'free for exploration and use' - plenty of wriggle room for mining.
Rick Stroud, author of The Book Of The Moon, believes the Moon will be the next environmental frontier. 'If we strip-mine the Moon, we'll do irreparable damage,' he says. He predicts a free-for-all, with rights of ownership for whoever sets up camp first. 'The worst-case scenario is that we could see wars on Earth over the Moon's resources,' he says.
Helium-3 is a potent safe fuel that could be used to power nuclear fusion reactors to produce clean electricity. It is created by heating vast quantities of lunar soil or 'regolith'. One ton of He-3 is currently valued at $5billion (£3.27billion) and could power New York for a year. Three fully-loaded Space Shuttles could meet the entire planet's annual energy needs.
China leads the way, with India and Russia also stating that He-3 will be part of their energy futures. The US plans to establish a Moon base by 2021. Private investors are also funding missions."
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BACK OF THE ENVELOPE MATHMATICS:
A section of land (one square mile) contains 640 acres, there is roughly 14,062,500 sections of land on the moon. Regolith is the upper six to sixty feet of lunar soil. At about 40 pounds per cubic foot, an acre one meter deep of regolith weighs 5,191,680 pounds or 2,595.84 tons. If you multiply that times the 640 acres in a section you get 1,661,337.6 tons.
Why the math? The article continues on about how much regolith it takes to produce a ton of He-3:
"It takes a 1 million tons of regolith to produce one ton of He-3. Large-scale mining will scar the lunar landscape. Stroud worries about what may be lost. 'The Moon is a record of 5 billion years of our universe's history. Mining will fundamentally change the Moon's atmosphere and destroy its surface.' "
The article concludes that 4 space shuttles filled with He-3 could power the entire planet for a year. So it would take about 65 - 70 sections of lunar land out of the 14 million sections to power planet earth for a year.
Okay, lets see a show of hands, planet Earth ends it dependance on fossil fuels and ends all the pollution, climate change, and health risks surrounding fossil fuels in exchange 70 sections of the moon lose it's top three feet of soil. Would that be a fair trade?
1 year = 70 sections
10 years = 700 sections
100 years = 7000 sections
1000 years = 70,000 sections
10000 years = 700,000 sections
How many wars have been fought over forests for fuel? Coal? Oil? And these authors are worried about future wars over a resource that would take 200,000 years to exhaust?
My numbers are based on the top 1 meter but regolith depth varies depending on the age of the rock formation it was created from. It measures from 2 meters to estimates of 20 meters in depth.
Leave your thoughts in the comments section.
PAGE 2:
This should make DKOS members mad as hell. (see "Russia Charges NASA 51 Million Dollars For Soyuz Seats.", 'Americans in Space', May 16, 2009). $719 million, $141 million and now $306 million. That is how much America has spent for rides to space rather than funding COTS-D. The program Congress has pushed NASA into funding and establishing domestic commercial astronaut launch services.
NASA, Russia sign contract extension
"The NASA space agency says it has signed a contract extension with its Russian counterpart regarding crew transports to the International Space Station.
The U.S. agency said in an online statement the $306 million deal with Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos will involve four launches by the Roscosmos Soyuz program, RIA Novosti reported Friday.
NASA said on its Web site Thursday the new deal includes "comprehensive Soyuz support, including all necessary training and preparation for launch, crew rescue, and landing of a long-duration mission for six individual station crew members."
The contract modification comes after Alexei Krasnov, Roscosmos director of manned flight programs, announced NASA would have to pay $51 million per Soyuz spacecraft passenger on trips to the space station."
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Jeff Foust's Space Politics site had an interesting quote from Senator Nelson on COTS:
Sometimes COTS-D isn’t COTS-D
"Last week Sen. Bill Nelson made a vigorous defense of COTS Capability D (COTS-D) during a hearing with acting NASA administrator Chris Scolese, pressing Scolese on why NASA wasn’t funding Space Act agreements for COTS-D as directed by the NASA Authorization Act of 2008. Those comments stood out in broad relief compared to the criticism directed towards commercial ISS crew transportation made earlier the same day by Sen. Richard Shelby.
Now, the Orlando Sentinel reports, Nelson may be backtracking on that support, claiming that he wasn’t necessarily supporting COTS-D, despite his comments in last Thursday’s hearing. "Whatever you heard, I want to make sure you understand I wasn’t specifically pushing COTS-D," Nelson told the Sentinel. "What I was pushing was launch complex 36 [at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station]. ... COTS-D first off is a human-rated program and that has not been sanctioned by NASA yet." "
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PAGE 3:
This Week in Science
"Climate change threatens everyone, but a new report suggests that, as with so many other phenomena, the poor get stuck with a disproportionate share of the ill effects:
Climate change is disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities in the United States - a "climate gap" that will grow in coming decades unless policymakers intervene, according to a University of California study.
Everyone, the researchers say, is already starting to feel the effects of a warming planet, via heat waves, increased air pollution, drought, or more intense storms. But the impacts - on health, economics, and overall quality of life - are far more acute on society's disadvantaged, the researchers found.
Of course the poor in the US are not spared. And as the article notes, in our bassackwards system it is the poor who are least likely to have access to proper health to offset those effects. Right now, climate change is projected to be killing upwards of 300,000 people a year. But that's just a bloody drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what we could be in store for if we don't get a handle on this problem."
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POLL RESULTS:
The poll conducted yesterday had a lower than average turnout (67) but almost half of DKOS members, who participated in the poll said "let's go".
Star Trek Sequel Talk & Some Awesome Concept Art
"Back in March, it was reported that the writers of Star Trek, Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci (Transformers 1 & 2, Fringe) as well as contributor Damon Lindelof (Lost) have all been signed to pen the sequel to J.J. Abrams’ successful sci-fi hit and that they were planning on a 2011 release. As soon as opening weekend came around, everyone was hearing the sequel talk and expecting the next film to debut in two years.
In that interview where they discussed writing the sequel’s script, Lindelof explained that they’d be waiting to see the fan reaction to the first one so they’ll know how to better shape the next one. Since the first one was pretty amazing with only some weak plot points, I hope we get a perfected sequel with perhaps a little less lighting (Check out this hilarious video on Star Trek’s lens flares)
On the subject of the sequel, Bruce Greenwood spoke with TrekMovie.com and gave his thoughts on when we may see the next movie gear up production and what we may be able to expect in terms of the stories."
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YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS:
"Back when I was single I would have signed on to a Mars mission in a heartbeat, but with a family, there's just no way. I just hope somebody goes in my lifetime.
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." -- Dom Hélder Câmara" - SLKRR
"Spectroscopic data Finding oceans will be a bitch. The amount of light coming in is microscopic, a fraction of a fraction of the dimmest stars. In order to see an ocean, you'll need an amazingly stable pointing instrument, capable of very good light-gathering. It can be done, it won't be cheap. What's good about it is repeatability; can't have oceans on a rotationally locked planet, so any planet with an ocean will have a very regular, repeated period." - Dcoronata
THE SPACE FUNNY PAGE:
Submitted to the comments section by JekyllnHyde.
TODAY'S POLL:
Saturday in Space - Weekly Tracking Poll on space funding.
Read other NASA and Space diaries on DKOS.