Existing Commercial Potential for Helium-3 from Luna

>
>Seasons greetings,
>
>I posted some ideas on lunarpedia about Existing Commercial Potential
>for Helium-3 from Luna.
>
>The Moon is an abundant source of He3. He3 has a market value, even
>though He3 fusion is not yet demonstrated. It might be worth
>collecting He3 from the Moon today simply to sell into the existing
>terrestrial market.
>
>Current market price for He3 is about $46,500 per troy ounce
>($1500/gram, $1.5M/kg), more than 120 times the value of gold and
>over eight times the value of Rhodium.
>
>Question: can we reduce the cost of recovering He3 from the lunar
>surface to that level, e.g. $1500 per gram? What would be the capital
>cost of setting up a small He3 production facility on Luna?

Hi Charles,

I would expand your question a bit?
Wouldn't it be a lot more economical to get this material from a Near
Earth Asteroid located at about 0.25 AU from Earth?

The Moon has a gravitation well and this costs money to get materials
on and off. We will need heavier and stronger crafts to mine there as
we would need doing the same on an asteroid.

Doing the same with robotic crafts would save costs and masses needed
to support human life.

The best of all we could do that now, not having to wait on
developments in human life support.
Betting on the Moon card only would cost humanity not only money but
time also, years of development were nothing other is done.

I would start to set out to the asteroids first and getting back to
the Moon later when we are able to support Moon operations with
materials and technology (especially in space construction and
fabrication as well as tele-operation) gained at the asteroids.

Choosing an Asteroid as close to the Sun as possible would reduce
equipment size needed to generate energy from solar panels remarkable.
Solar concentrators for melting processes would be extremely capable
at 0.25 AU (16 times of that delivered at Earth level) as the energy
supply delivered from our Sun.

The same would apply to the energy levels available for solar cell
arrays and for the solar radiation pressure available to drive solar
sail spacecraft.

He3 comes from the solar wind which is 16 times stronger as well at
0.25 AU, so we could expect 16 times more he3 on such a NEA as on the
Moon.

Putting this 4 factors together, would reduce the capital needed for
space mining without in situ human involvement, at least 4 factors of
magnitude compared to a Moon operation with humans on the Moon
or at least 3 factors of magnitude when the mining operation on the
Moon would be robotic or tele-operated.

What would happen If two companies would start out developing space
mining, one developing choosing a moon operation and the other an
asteroid operation?

The Asteroid Mining Company (AMC) could even though it would take a
bit longer to get to the asteroid return the first ore delivery faster
than the Moon Mining Company (MMC).
Those asteroid ores could be mined more than 3 orders of magnitude
cheaper than the Moon ores.

If I would operate the MMC, I would close it down since my product
would be not competitive at all.

Citation of the article you quoted:
>Today, the world's supply of Helium-3 can probably be counted in hundreds of kilograms, value of 100 kg would be $150M. So the total stockpile value today is probably about half a billion USD.
>
>The US DOE does sell He3 commercially, but how much of the present stockpile has actually been sold on the open market? Not sure if that number is publicly available.
>
>But for arguments sake let us start at the level of collecting 100kg of He3 from the Moon and assume its value would be $150M.

A small ion driven probe which would be able to get one ton of ore
from an asteroid back to Earth orbit could generate 1.5 billion of
value in one single operation.

It could return to the next mining operation also.

Getting and transporting one ton of ore with small equipment seems
feasible.

My proposal for such a craft would be a system solar sail shown at
http://solar-thruster-sailor.info/figs/fig19-21d.html
which uses ion propulsion to reach the target and could carry one or
two prospector landers along with communication and observation
satellites which support the tele-operation.

The craft carries ample solar cell arrays to enable SEP-propulsion and
has also a large docking station where the daughter units are carried.
The solar sails serve rather for station keeping and attitude control
near the asteroid and (having 16 times the solar radiation pressure
available) for acceleration when returning from the asteroid to Earth
orbit.

The daughter units could dock out at the asteroid were the observation
and communications remain while the prospector landers dock back into
the carrier ship for return to Earth orbit.

As the sailcraft can reef the sail foils again, it is also able to
deliver the ore to the ISS.

Regards

Frank