Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
The idealistic answer: Science! Lots of things to learn by establishing humanity’s first extraterrestrial presence on our closest celestial neighbor.
The realistic answer: Capitalism. Lots of money to be made in mining the moon.
There really isn’t that much money to be made mining the moon, though. Not considering how much it would cost to get a mining operation there.
The startup costs would be immense, but the cost of getting that material home wouldn’t be as much as you might think given the lower gravity on the moon. The moon’s gravity is low enough you can basically shove all of that material into a rail gun fired at about the right orbit with earth, have it escape the moon’s gravity and get captured by the earths gravity (this sounds dangerous until you remember how much energy is needed to negate the gravity of both the moon and the earth, plus the Earth’s atmosphere. Besides, it works in Kerbal space program!) , then you just need enough delta-v on board for menouvers and to deorbit your freighters. Basically imagine throwing shipping crates of ores in the general direction of earth which get caught by the Earth’s gravity then orbit and drop down at a designated site, and that’s the promise of moon mining!
Mining the moon to send materials to Earth would not be economical in the slightest because the Moon has nothing Earth doesn’t. Sure, space launches from the Moon would be way easier and cheaper than from Earth (once you make the massive investment of time and money to build the space launch facilities on the Moon). But if you’re talking about shipping materials to Earth from the Moon, either you need to send your freighters back from Earth to the Moon (expensive), or you make the freighters on the Moon and disassemble them on Earth, counting them as part of the haul. All that for iron, silicon, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium, stuff we can get on Earth easily enough.
The only possible economic argument for Moon mining is for a self-sustaining lunar settlement able to source space launch materials locally instead of getting them from an expensive rocket from Earth. That way, you can use the Moon as a jumping-off point to the rest of the solar system and beyond. That’s a great idea for space exploration in the long term for sure. But it’s a very long term plan and won’t be economically feasible for a century at least.
One could make the argument that mining Earth is contributing to planetary pollution and generally fucking up our ecosystem. That’s true for sure. I’m pretty sure implementing clean mining practices would be more economical than the cost of lunar mining (and that’s not even accounting for the pollution caused by the freighters’ reentry).
Mining on the moon leads to mining asteroids.
Asteroids are not a great source of minerals. They are far less dense than planets and moons, and most of what they are made of isn’t super rare or valuable.
In the extremely long term, off-earth mining will probably be a good idea. But for the next 100 years or so at least, it’ll be way cheaper to mine on Earth.
Most hojillionaires want to do stuff in space so they can avoid government oversight and regulation.