Earth’s next quantum revolution might depend on strip-mining the moon

submitted by Powderhorn to space 7 points | 0 comments https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-helium-3-create-a-gold-rush-on-the-moon/ > Since time immemorial, humans gazing up at the moon have asked grand questions. Where did it come from? Why does it wax and wane? Is it made of cheese? > > We now have responses to most of these (“a giant impact,” “orbital phases” and “no, sadly,” respectively). But as an international 21st-century lunar race intensifies, one pragmatic query remains: How can you make money on the moon? > > Helium-3 is spectacularly useful, and demand for it is soaring. A superlative coolant, helium-3 enables quantum computers to reach their operating temperatures, fractions of a degree above absolute zero. The precious substance is also vital for advanced medical imaging, as well as sniffing out smuggled nuclear material, and holds promise as a clean fuel for future fusion reactors. On terra firma, most of the available supply of helium-3 comes as a by-product of nuclear weaponry via the radioactive decay of tritium, a rare isotope of hydrogen that boosts the power of thermonuclear bombs. This process makes just a few kilograms of helium-3 per year worldwide, and a single kilogram currently costs about $20 million. > > But scientists estimate that somewhere on the order of a billion kilograms of helium-3 are lacquered onto the lunar surface. So the moon-based mining of helium-3 could, it seems, someday become a multitrillion-dollar industry.