China lands on the moon. Will they send men next?

neubejiita said:

Helium 3. That is very valuable. We are running out of helium on Earth, wasting it in balloons and other crap. At least the moon has it in abundance. That is why China wants to go to the moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

Damn, I had no idea. That would be considerably valuable, but how much Helium 3 is the Moon believed to hold? (That might be a silly question, as the moon is quite large). From that same Wikipedia article it mentions (cited)-

Because of the low concentrations of helium-3, any mining equipment would need to process extremely large amounts of regolith (over 150 million tonnes of regolith to obtain one ton of helium 3),

I can't actually gauge how true this statement is, but if that is the case then mining prospects (at least for Helium 3) are miles and miles away

Is this not what the movie 'Moon' was about, mining Helium 3 from its surface and also about cloning :)

bcwood16 said:

Is this not what the movie 'Moon' was about, mining Helium 3 from its surface and also about cloning :)

No, it was about Kevin Spacey.

neubejiita said:

but at least China want to mine the moon and bring back mineral wealth to help build their empire. What do you think?

They are playing catch up with the USA, but they could surge ahead if valuable minerals are found.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826

I've been fascinated by this concept for a long time. If China could find resources else where, perhaps they could stop being such unscrupulous polluters. The same goes for all other industrialized nations. But I see this as China reflecting on what they are doing, and seeking ways to correct it. This is why I believe the US should focus more on space exploration. We should find other rocks in space to exploit for resources, and leave where we live alone. I was absolutely disgusted by what happened in the Gulf of Mexico three years ago. Sea life has been taken a hard blow from us since the 1800s, CO2 emissions started to increase the acidity in the oceans. This results in complications of the reproductive organs in marine-life; low-fertility; and thus extinction.

The US will act to inhibit alternative resources as long as its entire economy and currency are based in petrofuels.

Clonehunter said:

I say we build a full on Mars base. Complete with teleporters.

I just hope that the teleporters don't teleport demons to the base or where really screwed :)

Now we know what their real plan is, heh.

Mining the moon could risk the gravital balance between the earth and the moon, that would cause the tides to stop completely, which would actually kill most of the life on earth through a long, quick chain of events. Fuck yeah, Biology.

also, cities like London would get totally drowned in water.
thigs like that awaits.

D_GARG said:

Mining the moon could risk the gravital balance between the earth and the moon

The Moon is kinda big, you know? Baring some Von Neumann nightmare machines, there's no way you could have mining operations on the Moon ever approaching even one half percent of the Moon's mass.

Let's make a quick check: Wikipedia says the Moon's mass is 7.3477 × 10^22 kg.

Now let's look at some other statistics. What is the human capacity to mine stuff? Let's look at gold, which is one of the most sought-after mineral that has been mined throughout history. Again, Wikipedia says:

A total of 174,100 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, according to GFMS as of 2012.

Wow. That's 1.741 × 10^8 kg, right? Apologies if I'm off by one, I just woke up. So we have like 14 orders of magnitude difference between mankind's ability to mine much-coveted resources and the mass of the Moon. That's like 0.000000000001% of the Moon's mass right here if I counted my zeroes correctly.

as long as its just helium humanity might desire from the moon, but it is still important to keep in mind how large impact the consequnce would have if men on the moon would mess something up in unlikely scales.

its probably still not a good idea to mine the moon. If a nation, is this case china would mine the moon, they would have to have another nation either mining by own motor or cooporate with another nation, because of the moons current legal status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Legal_status

You know what's even worse than making the Moon lighter with all that extensive mining? That same process would make Earth heavier! We'd have to put thrusters on the Moon to keep its orbit from decaying because of increased gravitational pull! We'd also have to put thrusters on our sperms, they're getting lazy as is.

As for the Moon's legal status, that's actually interesting. Although I'm pretty sure such academic treaties would be repudiated unilaterally the moment someone would find a way to turn lunar mining profitable. There are no lunar penguins to fear for, nor is the Moon our heritage we must keep pristine for future generations, or whatever vocabulary is used to protect the Antarctica.

Average said:

Well, if there is any country that would rape the moon for profit it would be China. I live here and it seems that these days money is the sole reason for existence... Yay the future...

If the US didn't do it. China wouldn't. There was a moon real estate company selling moon plots to celebrities. Wonder if China will respect those boundaries.

D_GARG said:

Mining the moon could risk the gravital balance between the earth and the moon, that would cause the tides to stop completely, which would actually kill most of the life on earth through a long, quick chain of events. Fuck yeah, Biology.

also, cities like London would get totally drowned in water.
thigs like that awaits.

We have to go to the moon to let the heliums out. Moon's going to float away if we don't, haven't you ever let go of a balloon?

geo said:

There was a moon real estate company selling moon plots to celebrities. Wonder if China will respect those boundaries.

There still is and not just to gullible celebs. It's a 100% bullshit scam, there's no boundaries to respect since those title deeds have no legal standing. As for agreements like the Moon Treaty, they'll be repudiated the moment a state or corporation decides it's in a strong enough position to defend any claim it makes with military force. The space race will then degenerate into a land grab, in much the same way the old European powers claimed chunks of Africa, Asia and the Americas during the Age of Discovery.

China's space programme is more about nationalism and building up their aeronautical engineering industry than any real scientific benefit or grand plan to mine resources and place missiles. It's like writing your own compiler as a programmer. There's no need to do it, and you're not going to advance the state of compiler science, but it's a good way to test and improve your skills.

GreyGhost said:

The space race will then degenerate into a land grab, in much the same way the old European powers claimed chunks of Africa, Asia and the Americas during the Age of Discovery.

At least there are no Moon Natives to genocide this time.

Clonehunter said:

I say we build a full on Mars base. Complete with teleporters.

Just dont hire the cast of Doom 3

GreyGhost said:

There still is and not just to gullible celebs. It's a 100% bullshit scam, there's no boundaries to respect since those title deeds have no legal standing. As for agreements like the Moon Treaty, they'll be repudiated the moment a state or corporation decides it's in a strong enough position to defend any claim it makes with military force. The space race will then degenerate into a land grab, in much the same way the old European powers claimed chunks of Africa, Asia and the Americas during the Age of Discovery.

Wow what a throwback to 1999 that website was.

Dragonsbrethren said:

We have to go to the moon to let the heliums out. Moon's going to float away if we don't, haven't you ever let go of a balloon?

the moon lacks a gas that would be lighter than air, as helium is,
also, the moon lacks an atmosphere, and then there is gravity, unfortunate.

it is considered that the moon do not have an atmosphere

EDIT:
Thing was, if helium was a major component of the moon, then it wouldnt be a good idea to mine the moon for helium even though helium is a light weight matter, then there is that quantity I was uncertain about.
also as soon as you add politics then ape shit will emerge, just look at the issues with politics around this world, I dont need to give an example for that.

The goal isn't to mine the moon. Governments have already secretly towed back asteroids made of solid gold and succeeded in alchemy anyway, and are just keeping the price high with artificial scarcity, just like they did with diamonds. Money is just a spider web to hold everyone else down, and irrelevant to such elites. The only motive for these people is power, and that's where the moon comes in. The goal is to reduce the moon's centripetal force by slowing down its orbit. This will create a death star, only it will be a death moon, not a death star (the one on star wars was also inappropriately called a death "star" when it was more moon-like than star-like, but whatever) only instead of shooting a giant lazer, it will shoot the moon, or more accurately simply let it fall, directly toward the earth. Most of our solar system is secretly colonized by the elite technologically advanced corrupt dinosaur civilization that did this same thing 66 million years ago as you can see in this historical document:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_SFb4gNWHc

gggmork said:

The only motive for these people is power, and that's where the moon comes in. The goal is to reduce the moon's centripetal force by slowing down its orbit. This will create a death star, only it will be a death moon, not a death star (the one on star wars was also inappropriately called a death "star" when it was more moon-like than star-like, but whatever) only instead of shooting a giant lazer, it will shoot the moon, or more accurately simply let it fall, directly toward the earth.

Why not just arrange for a chunk of neutron star (or something similarly heavy) to embed itself in the Moon then let gravity do the rest, like in this farcical TV miniseries.

GreyGhost said:

Why not just arrange for a chunk of neutron star (or something similarly heavy) to embed itself in the Moon then let gravity do the rest, like in this farcical TV miniseries.

That looks so stupid I might just have to arrange to watch it for the comedy value.

That sounds amazing.

we could have constant full moon / tide by splitting the moon into several moons, dont fear, because moons reproduce like cells do, tho we can change its DNA to splitt faster, infact we could even change its DNA in real time from earth to make it increase the number of itself as humanity desires by beaming the moon with radiation right into its main DNA source.

aka: you will not have just one full moon when you date a girl, you will have the whole sky full of all the stages of the moons light display.

R.I.P., China's Lunar Rover

Jade Rabbit, or Yutu, China's first and much-celebrated lunar rover, suffered a fatal mechanical malfunction last month and is no longer working, according to a sad and short report from state media:

"China's first lunar rover, Yutu, could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected, and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service. Yutu experienced mechanical problems on Jan 25 and has been unable to function since then."

That was predictable.

Probably killed by demons, just like Daisy.

Maybe there's a secret Soviet base on the moon and they destroyed the thing before anyone could find out.

Avoozl said:

Maybe there's a secret Soviet base on the moon and they destroyed the thing before anyone could find out.

So that's where Stalin V 1.666 is hiding!

Avoozl said:

Maybe there's a secret Soviet base on the moon and they destroyed the thing before anyone could find out.

Or rather, moon nazis.