Should We Mine the Moon? | Unexplored | BBC Earth Science

[@AndyFromBeaverton]

Is there crypto on the moon?

[@dmphotography.prints]

😂😂😂

[@obeydefi6312]

xyo 😎🍕

[@maelgugi]

For me it's simple, do you prefer mining on a bare rock or do you want to to destroy a whole tropical habitat? You can get the same elements from both, but one option sounds better to me...

[@kodiaksol625]

Were not efficient yet, so both would happen

[@AmanThakur-zc1nq]

Mascons though?

[@eddwar8597]

No

[@Nat3ski]

I don't think that we can trust any one state or any private industry to act responsibly in this regard. This needs to be approached with a global collaboration similar to the UN, but with enough power to enforce bad actors compliance. (unlike the UN)

[@gregkelly2145]

Private enterprise will be the entities which get us to space and utilize resources there, not governments. Once we have people living on the moon and Mars, Earth's nation states will be largely irrelevant. The UN can pass all the 'laws' and regulations they want, space lawyers can argue, but if they can't get there, they won't have any say.

[@emoney7731]

Sounds like an ambitious idea that would lead to logistical nightmares, but I'm all for it.

[@TiredOldMann]

Is bringing any material back from the moon worth it ? What is the max weight we can land back on the Earth ? Space capsule and maybe space planes are not that big .

[@georgesos]

Brilliant, provided we have an earth to bring these resources back and a humanity that needs them..which is unlikely since we will destroy earth in the next few decades.2100 and humans are gone unless we address the earth problems.

[@Ric_1985]

The moment the mass of the moon changes we are screwed. The entire life on earth is synched with the moon, from trees to the ocean, the potential impact of this is just to much.

[@MrMegaPussyPlayer]

7:26 Well ... if we don't want the face of the moon to change, we can just mine the "dark" side. I don't see a way we can mine enough of the moon, in anytime soon, to change its properties in any significant way. It's just too big. Also: The moon will be the platform for the first deeper space mining operations (asteroids and alike). And: The treaty that no one ca own land will fly out of the window as soon as structures are built. Which then belongs to whomever brings the bigger stick.

[@Nat3ski]

Very short sighted and its this perspective that will doom us all one day. We've seen this thinking cause trouble on earth already. We may not be aware of the issues until the damage is already done, like asbestos, CFCs, Coal and Petrol.

[@MrMegaPussyPlayer]

@@Nat3ski I doubt you have any idea how big the moon is.

[@Nat3ski]

@@MrMegaPussyPlayer significantly smaller than our planet, which we've already managed to irreparably damage in our never ending quest for more resources and profit. Don't be such an arrogant prick

[@Sangrell]

Rare earth minerals are found everywhere on earth and actually not that difficult to mine - it’s just expensive to set up refineries as well as being terrible for the environment. That’s why it has thus far been easier to procure them from china as their mines and logistics are set up to do so already, alongside their government not seeming to care about the environmental and human consequences of refining them, as well as giving them means of exerting political pressure on the rest of the world. Terrible as all that may be, that’s the position we find ourselves in given that much of the world doesn’t want such mines “in their back yard”. So the idea of shipping them from the moon isn’t great either given the exorbitant price, and that’s even when factoring in potentially reduced launch costs, and the environmental effects of all the rocket launches that would be required to make such an endeavor economically feasible. As much as I love sci-fi ideas like this, fiction is exactly where such considerations will stay for quite some time to come. Let’s just be rational and keep exploring outer space, but find better, cleaner, and more ethical ways of doing things like this at home…

[@valentthor2655]

Lol , FYI . Surface mining is already going on up on this thing we call " Our Moon" ! Access is however very limited by the tall Grey aliens the American military industrial complex is working for ! Why do you think Kennedy was assassinated? Eisenhowers warning to the people was also limited from full disclosure about the tall Grey aliens he met with.

[@honkhonk8009]

What "exhorbitant price"? Your transferring matter from the moon, to the earth. You realize that the amount of deltaV needed to go from a moon orbit into the earth, is litterally miniscule right? When it comes to regular ass material, you can easily put it on a cheap ass heatshield, and have it deorbit its way onto wherever you want. Fuel is the cheapest aspect of space operations. Especially with modern day launch costs because of vehicles like Starship, its quite litterally TRIVIAL to do something like this. Once that launch service goes online, doing regular operations on the moon will quite litterally be no different from doing operations on a satellite.

[@crazythings6358]

My boils when I listen these points like going to mine moon for desires which leads to comos changes. Environmentalists should fight for this

[@fdavidmiller2]

Yes, next question please

[@missheadbanger]

Canada is planning to open a rare earth elements mine near yellowknife at Thor lake, It will help slow the dependence the world has on Chinese exports.

[@justpaulo]

Fusion produces electricity directly w/o going into heating, then steam (then turbine)... what ?!?! Beaming microwaves from the Moon... what !?! It would be much easier to do it from a geostationary orbit and yet where are they?

[@Systox25]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion First time hearing that.

[@Systox25]

Microwave beaming would be a super weapon too

[@justpaulo]

@@Systox25 First time for me too. I guess I was wrong...thanks

[@Vega004]

This show is very underrated please guys keep sharing this video

[@generalnawaki]

hell if you're willing to front the expenses for starting it up then the rewards are yours for the taking. someone's gotta be the first to do it and they will be richer than any man ever born, right up until the first large asteroid gets mined (kyper belt large) that person or nation will be wealthy beyond the definition.

[@bubmallo]

imagine a world where we invested in moon mining and it became a flourishing economy and when you look up in the night sky its a bright lit up moon mining city

[@RJavierYepesDeV]

Great video! Quito-Ecuador 2022

[@peterthomas5792]

What's the point? There are no ships to sink.

[@MrFossil367ab45gfyth]

These issues are things that we need to work out for the future.

[@6stang97]

Isn't the moon's field of gravity (and thus Earth's tides, seasons and possibly even it's path around the sun) a function of the moon's mass + density? I'm no physicist, but any concept should be taken to the extreme before we start doing things we may not be able to undo. Engineers / Physicists- Help me out here.

[@matthew-jy5jp]

Me and you I think of the only two people that actually knows what the moon does for the Earth. I cannot believe how absolutely stupid af people are on here

[@9PlatinumGamer9]

How much material do you think we could ship to Earth before that becomes a problem? Hundreds of trillions of tons?

[@robinhodgkinson]

The moon is very very very big! It’s mass is about 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 ton (seriously). And given the cost of space transportation They would only ever be removing high value, low mass, refined material. I think your concern is like taking a few buckets of water out of the Atlantic Ocean and worrying you might be lowering the high tide mark.

[@Captain__Obvious]

Mining any significant fraction of the moon's material would also take an infeasibly astronomical amount of energy. The energy required to crash the entire moon into the earth by moving its orbit is about 3.7x10^28 Joules which gives a lower bound on the energy required to mine all the material on the moon and transport it to earth. You could do better smashing comets into the moon but only by about 5 zeroes and it's probably not viable. The total energy production of the entire earth per year is 6.0x10^20 Joules meaning strip-mining 2% of the moon's mass would take at minimum our entire energy output for 1.2 million years. Add some more zeroes for real-world losses, the energy required to actually do the mining and process the material etc and you're into "we just can't do this at our current point on the Kardashev scale" territory.

[@6stang97]

Thanks for the info@@robinhodgkinson & @Captain Obvious - well said

[@fidelcatsro6948]

That depends what type of mines we plan to use there.. Fragmentation and stake mines. Shaped charge mines. Directional mines. Blast mines. Bounding mines. Flame mines. Chemical mines. Blast mines.

[@MrMegaPussyPlayer]

8:07 Rofl. Resources everywhere belong to whoever has the bigger stick. Was like that from the start of time and still hasn't changed. Unless it is convenient not to do so (cheap workers and a land willing to sell it cheaper than you do it, or they have a pretty big stick themselves)

[@rex_schd]

No end for human greed 🕯️

[@123qwe321ify]

Whatever we end up doing i'm sure our great grandchildren will curse us for it, history continues

[@arjun5383]

I wonder that the health insurance on the moon would look like.

[@grafito4438]

The best thing we could bring back from the moon, is angry extra terrestials. For mining a planet we don't live on.

[@timbur2614]

Wouldn’t changing the weight of the moon change the tides ultimately distorting weather and unleash chaos on our population?

[@Ric_1985]

Yes the mass of the moon is what creates it's gravity, the moon it's like a huge clock synchronized with our planet, even our bodies are synchronized with the moon. Mining the moon is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard

[@mothermovementa]

5

[@sirmeowthelibrarycat]

🤔 There is one major issue in waiting here . . . the question of ownership. You referred to a flag planted on the Moon. That was once how explorers claimed territories for their governments. Whose flag is on the Moon - that of the United States 🇺🇸. Not of the United Nations, representing all of humanity. Will an American government permit other states to participate in what you suggest? A continuation of geopolitics beyond Earth is not very welcome.

[@Nuzjal]

I wonder isn't the narrator a sister of Emma Stone?

[@elnosworld9893]

Well I think the answer lies in another question haven’t we Learned anything from tipping the scales and destroying the homeostasis of the earth ??? so what do you think?

[@Jotari]

Tipping the scales and destroying homeostasis on Earth resulted in the widespread destruction of countless species of life. Tipping the scales on the moon risks causing widespread damage to motionless space dust. Unless we happen to find some life there, that's a completely moot argument to me.

[@Lazymotion]

Literally none that we did to the Earth will do anything to the Moon.

[@stephanievivier290]

No, we shouldn't! Because if we did, there will become problems. Look what happened to earth, oil field and coal mine. Just leave the moon alone!!!!

[@raselmia4373]

😭😭😭O Great Only One Creator Allah Protect our Palestinian Muslims and Al Aqsa Mosque.

[@Etheral101]

First nation to claim it gets to make the rules. That simple

[@knightsljx]

yea, nothing can go wrong. it's not like the Moon affects anything that happens on Earth right? Right?

[@Lazymotion]

What do you think taking 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001% of the moon will do?

[@CalebKallimanis-le4zz]

Sounds like a bad idea

[@EngineersQuest]

Shouldn't we spend the money taking care of our planet and people? We've screwed it up so go screw up the moon?

[@Webfra14]

Just gobble it all up. It's fine. Nobody is gonna miss the booger anyways.

[@joey6058]

Unlimited cheese 🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀

[@jamesstylers]

Every time she asks a question or wonders about something she looks away. Noticed that?

[@niewissen9912]

They either won't have a drill bit strong enough to penetrate it. Or they will learn it actually is hollow. Or both

[@Yutani_Crayven]

Beaming solar microwave energy from the Moon to the Earth is the silliest thing that I've heard of today. There's no need to convert solar energy into microwaves in order to transport them from the Moon to the Earth. THE SUN ALREADY DOES IT FOR FREE. We can just wait for the photons to arrive at Earth and take those.

[@Captain__Obvious]

The point is half of the moon's surface area is illuminated by the sun which represents an ADDITIONAL surface area of ~19 million km² or roughly the continent of South America on top of the sun-collecting surface area we have here on Earth. Now double that because only about 48% of incoming solar radiation actually reaches the Earth's surface unlike the moon, where low-gravity megastructures are also possible. Simply reflecting that light as-is would require an extremely elaborate, potentially physically impossible arrangement of mirrors hovering and moving around the moon since the sunlit side rotates and is mostly not visible from earth. There'd be focusing issues over the distances involved and huge losses particularly through the atmosphere and clouds. In contrast photovoltaic solar cells could be constructed from lunar dust and microwave beams relayed between satellites solve the transmission issues.

[@MrMegaPussyPlayer]

2:22 And if you open your mouth, grilled birds will fly in … ok microwaved birds

[@arunistheking]

One of the most lazily produced (junk) piece of video with little to zero research I've seen all year.

[@joshuam.escalera3493]

Dont forget how much earth depends on the moon how important it is to sustain life on earth ! Surely going and disrupting it's balance will cause Catastrophic change that can destroy man kind on earth .

[@Lazymotion]

Tell me what change you're talking about. Tide? It'll kill a pathetic amount of species while we've already kill millions unintentionally. What other "drastic changes" do you mean? Losing brightness in the night? The moon takes its light from the sun. No taking things from the moon will lower the brightness.

[@xshootertilidie]

No. It would be a waste of time and money there are no elements in the moon.

[@martin096]

Have you gone up and checked? 🤔. We could sit on our arse and wait for rare elements to eventually run out, same with oil and gas, or go and do something about it. Vital elements on earth will eventually run out so we need to get it from somewhere or civilisation will be doomed.

[@Lazymotion]

A simple 5 second google search would've been enough for you NOT to say this.

[@Fattydeposit]

BBC promoting space imperialism.

[@Quantum-Bullet]

🇬🇧

[@Lazymotion]

Because Rule Britannia is it not?

[@smelkus]

Mine Moon meat from the Moon meat mine on the Moon that is ruled by an evil Moon crab called Mel Gibson

[@demonicusa.k.a.theblindguy3929]

I wish we could pump the brakes on the space exploration thing at least until we learn how to clean up and conserve our own planet. We've put plastic on half a dozen celestial bodies and out into the kiper belt. Makes me cringe to think about destroying other things out there. Utopian star trek pipe dream? Sure because greed usually wins. Just saying.

[@donaldharlan3981]

🤣 toxic. poisinous, waste, dangerous, fake. You would have destroyed the earth trying it.

[@Lazymotion]

If I were to trust someone... At least spell the obvious right.