From the Article

>NASA is pressing ahead with its mission to mine metals on the moon, seeking to bolster the sustainable space travel market and set the tone for a growing space race with China.
>
>The space agency has announced a search for university researchers to explore using metal extracted from the surface layer of the moon in 3D printing and other material sciences technologies.
>
>The solicitation joins a growing roster of efforts out of NASA to leverage resources in space to avoid having to use more fuel from Earth.
>
>This kind of work conjures sci-fi images of robotic moon mining rigs feeding sophisticated manufacturing plants that can be used for repairing vehicles or building facilities for lunar operations.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the Article

>NASA is pressing ahead with its mission to mine metals on the moon, seeking to bolster the sustainable space travel market and set the tone for a growing space race with China.
>
>The space agency has announced a search for university researchers to explore using metal extracted from the surface layer of the moon in 3D printing and other material sciences technologies.
>
>The solicitation joins a growing roster of efforts out of NASA to leverage resources in space to avoid having to use more fuel from Earth.
>
>This kind of work conjures sci-fi images of robotic moon mining rigs feeding sophisticated manufacturing plants that can be used for repairing vehicles or building facilities for lunar operations.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11a4fsd/nasa_speeds_up_quest_to_beat_china_to_mining/j9pp9jd/

[removed]

Wild. Just finished reading critical mass (fiction) dealt with mining on the moon quite well.

[deleted]

How absurdly complacent must the West be to find itself in a space-race against a country who's first crewed space flight was only in 2003???

I realize this is far out there, but could there possibly be any consequences to Earth from mining the moon? Say, a shift in the tides due to the lessened mass of the moon for example?

Well given the fact a lot of people seem to forget how important this is... pretty complacent. Like yall realize how much money space mining can be? The mineral wealth of a good sized asteroid could clear any debt we have.

I think Issac Arthur has a couple vids on the possible outcomes of moon mining. Highly recommend you check him out. And subscribe to his channel.

Mining for minerals is what fucked up the earth? Idk ab that one hoss.

[deleted]

Maybe it contributed because of pollutants illegaly disposed of but I think there a lot of other things that have to do with the "fucked up" earth

Or I could be completely wrong and spouting nonsense idk

What we gonna do? Poison the radioactive soil?

I'll be quite stoked if I live long enough to see a mining colony on the moon

[removed]

Better the moon than earth.

Kill millions of locals.

Who said we be living on the surface? You don't gotta live there to colonize it. Just send in the bots.

Issues:

you have to find the minerals you want

you have to get to them & mine them

You have to smelt them

You have to turn that lump into something useful

If you want to move it to anywhere else in the solar system you have to move it out of the gravity well that is the moon

& then there's moon dust - it's extremely toxic

Sure, give it a go & see what happens, but I'd rather be mining asteroids :)

God forbid we turn the lifeless wasteland into a… wait a second!

[removed]

The "great" USA has to wait for more than 50 years after landing on it to mine it and have a base. They have to wait for China, that's really really great

The value of metals depends on how scarce they are. Mine a billion tons of gold and the metal's value is less.

I don't see any use for mining the moon personally. It sounds a bit silly. We will have robots building robots in a few decades and humans haven't even touched 99% of the resources of the planet since all we did is mine a fraction of the 1% of the planet that is the crust.

So ... how will it ever really make sense to mine in space when all the best resources are here on earth without a gravity well to have to leave and re-enter constantly?

The commodity you find in space would have to be very unique and very hard to sythethize here on Earth, that seems very unlikely.

The only reason to mine the moon or Mars is to build stuff there, not to take it back to Earth, so realistically it doesn't matter.

Who builds better labor robots here on Earth and gets robots mining here on Earth and then has robots building robots.. THAT IS WHAT MATTERS. That determines how many of these eh.. moonshot ideas you can take on at once, the standard of living, the rate we combat climate change.. and of course even space mining .. though probably not to bring back to Earth.

The Moon and Mars are 100% scientific missions with no commercialization potential. Humans cannot live in these conditions long because of the low gravity and we have no solution at all for that, which means for now everything in space is for research. Maybe it's private research, but it's still just research.

We usually mine metals because we need them for something, not shits ‘n‘ giggles. We are still going to need the metals but they are cheaper and we can use our money for other things.

Commodity wealth is about supply and demand. If you could really bring back that much mass to Earth you'd drive the value way down. I don't see where debts matter as you wind up with robotic labor that can do 80% of our jobs. We really do have plenty of resources here on Earth and limit surface area. The BULK of the planet is huge compared to just the bit of habital land we live on, not just the surface is huge compared to the land, but the 3 dimensional volume of the planet is filled with PROBABLY anything we need for hundreds of years.

The premise to space mining is that you constantly overcome gravity and vast distances that all cost energy instead of drilling. I don't see many scenarios where space mining is more efficient than the nearly unlimited bulk of the planet.

Sooo occasionally you might pinpoint a high value asteroid and go get it, but a lot of just trash so the logistics here are not the easiest and if you have robots building robots than the cost of commodities has gone down on Earth so much that there isn't demand for space mining.

For space mining to make sense you need the commidity to really be in that much demand that you don't just mine it from Earth and with robotic automation and recyling and limited surface area/peak popultion around 10 billion I don't see it being practical.

Robotic mining means commodities are all worth less because demand is met more easily with more efficient automated processes. The same pattern will happen in all industries.

Money and value are still ONLY about demand, the easiest way to meet demand is all you really need or want to do usually. Space mining is too complex compared to demand, imo. Kind of like nuclear power probably can't beat solar, the simplest thing that gets the job done wins.

This is very true and makes sense. I hate it. But it makes sense. And I agree.