What formed the right eye of the 'Man in the Moon'? Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: What formed the right eye of the 'Man in the Moon'?
# 13707 byjoe@... on Aug. 3, 2016, 9:51 p.m.
Member since 2021-10-03
Baur baur@... [spacesettlers] wrote:
>
> the problem is that many of the processes concentrating these materials
> to mineable concentration are missing on the moon ..
Yes, it's true, the valuable minerals are likely to be diffuse.
On the other hand, there's a very sensible business boot-strap approach
here, which is to initially, just pick up any old rocks that happen to
be conveniently at hand, bring 'em back, and sell them. Lunar
meteorites (the only source of lunar material commercially available at
the moment) sell for $1k to $10k per gram, or 20-200 times as valuable
as gold [1]. Real, un-meteorized moon rocks would sell for at least
that much, probably more, at least until the market were saturated.
So, you start by selling moon rocks, and use that to fund prospecting &
mining operations. What counts as "mineable concentration" depends on
your technology (and relative abundance of alternative sources). I
suspect we'll be able to make good use of those deposits -- but time
will tell.
[1]
http://gizmodo.com/heres-where-well-build-our-first-space-mines-according-1707203598