The Moon & Helium 3 -Earth's Energy Salvation

Years before Sputnik and the Space Race, Joseph Stalin made a startling proposal to the ailing Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to divide the moon among the three Allied Powers at the Potsdam conference in 1945. Now, more than 60 years on, with energy demands, expected to increase eightfold by 2050 and the world population swelling toward 12 billion, Stalin's idea is finally beginning to make sense.

The planet's energy solution might be a non-radioactive isotope rare on earth, Helium-3, first discovered by Apollo astronauts in 1969 that experts view as a perfect fossil-fuel substitute: extremely potent, nonpolluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Twenty tons could provide the annual energy demand of the U.S. In monetary terms, it's worth $4 billion per ton.

Over billions of years, solar winds, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strike the moon, depositing helium 3 in the powdery soil, which could be directly converted into energy through a thermonuclear fusion reaction with no nuclear waste and provide energy for thousands of years.

In contrast to deuterium and tritium, which release 80 percent of their energy in the form of radioactive neutrons, helium 3 fusion could be produce safely in populated regions little residual radioactivity. Helium 3, an isotope of the familiar helium used to inflate balloons and blimps, has a nucleus with two protons and one neutron. A nuclear reactor based on the fusion of helium 3 anddeuterium, which has a single nuclear proton and neutron, would produce very few neutrons -- about 1 percent of the number generated by the deuterium-tritiumreaction.

Helium 3 fusion energy - classic Buck Rogers propulsion system- may be the key to future space exploration and settlement, requiring less radioactive shielding, lightening the load. Scientists estimate there are about one million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year.

Thermonuclear reactors capable of processing Helium-3 would have to be built, along with major transport system to get various equipment to the Moon to process huge amounts of lunar soil and get the minerals back to Earth.

A new Moon-focused Space Race has begun. China made its first steps in space just a few years ago, and is in the process of establishing a lunar base by 2024. NASA is currently working on a new space vehicle, Orion, which is destined to fly the U.S. astronauts to the moon in 13 years, to deploy a permanent base.

Russia, the first to put a probe on the moon, plans to deploy a lunar base in 2015. A new, reusable spacecraft, called Kliper, has been earmarked for lunar flights, with the International Space Station being an essential galactic pit stop.

The harvesting of Helium-3 on the could start by 2025. Our lunar mining could be but a jumping off point for Helium 3 extraction from the atmospheres of our Solar System gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter.

UN Treaties in place state that the moon and its minerals are the common heritage of mankind, so the quest to use Helium-3 as an energy source would likely demand joint international co-operation. Hopefully, we won't need another Potsdam Conference to work things out.

Posted by Casey Kazan.