Helium

[polaris93]

Something just occurred to me:

Our modern, high-tech civilization requires helium for numerous applications. It is a superfluid that will remain liquid all the way down to absolute zero (0K), something that is true of no other element, not even hydrogen. For that reason it is used for refrigeration in our MRI scanners and other vitally needed

Comments

[whitetail]

Forget where I read it, and it was awhile ago, but I heard that the moon is loaded with He3. I also seem to recall the author saying that helium was the only thing worth mining the moon for.

[polaris93]

Well, Luna is worth mining for its water, of which, we have learned, there is plenty, at least in hydrated rocks and ices inside lunar polar craters that sunlight never invades. Water = H2O = hydrogen + oxygen, both of which are needed by organic life (like us) for all sorts of useful processes, not to mention survival. And there's likely to be bonanzas of various kinds of useful minerals in lunar regolith as well as underground -- when we build habitats into old lava tubes, underground and thus protected from solar temper-tantrums, we'll need all of that. Luna is close to the Earth, useful as an atmosphere-free astronomical observatory and for studies of the effects of low-gravity conditions on various life-forms, a perfect place to build depositories for valuable documents as well as backup digital storage (we can store stuff in it using communication lasers based on Earth, updating at least once a day), and so on. The sunlight received at the top of lunar craters, which isn't at all filtered by any atmosphere and is thus full

[brezhnev]

If we ever build a space elevator or a launch loop, we could get it out of the upper atmosphere.

[polaris93]

Yep. But we know we can launch spacecraft from Earth, and, of course, we could build them in orbit around Earth or the Moon, then launch them from orbit. Less efficient, and takes longer, but do-able.