How Canada can help mine the moon

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mankind has dreamed about it for decades now, but sometime soon it will become a reality. There will be permanent bases on the moon. Now we can debate the timeline of soon when it comes to this, but right now, both NASA and a joint Chinese, Russian venture. Have committed to this, the space race is back on. How do I know that? Well, NASA administrator Bill Nelson, said two months ago, quote, it’s a fact we’re in a space race, but a space race For what resources? The moon has tons of them and whomever can get their base. To the right part of the moon. First, with the right kind of technology to extract those resources, we’ll gain a huge edge in the future of space travel and probably back here on Earth as well. The key part, however, is the extraction, mining in space. Is going to be hazardous. We already know that it’s remote and it will be done in extreme conditions. With the help of a lot of robotics, now there is a country that checks all those boxes. A country with experience and remote mining. In extreme conditions with excellence in space robotics and a working relationship already in place with nasa. Yes, that would be us. So here’s how Canada may help mine the moon. I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Alex Ellery is the Canada Research Professor in Space Robotics and Space Technology at Carleton University. Hello, Alex.

Alex Ellery Hi.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I wanna start by just asking you. People see the description for this episode, or they hear the term moon mining, I’m sure their minds go immediately to science fiction. How far are we from actually being able to attempt this?

Alex Ellery In fact, uh, the concept of mining the moon goes back to the 1970s, to the latter days of the Apollo program, but it subsequently died down, uh, during the 1980s, 1990s and two thousands. Until actually very recently when it’s kind like re reemerged again in terms of how close are we. I mean, if you look at the Luna, the Moon program, for example, from 1960s, they put people on the moon in the less than a decade because they essentially had a blank check. If we have a blank check, we could probably get some, you know, mining on the moon within five years, maybe it is a question of commitment.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings How far are we committed to developing the lunar environment for mining and potential commercial activities at the moment in Canada?

Alex Ellery We’re very slow off the mark. The US and the Europeans are basically, they’re outta the starting blocks already. They’ve got, uh, big programs underway, uh, developing the technologies. Canada’s basically still in the starting blocks and looking around trying to figure out which direction and which to run before we get into the logistics of it. Uh, cuz that’s what I’m fascinated by and that’s what we wanna talk to you about.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why do we want to do it? What is up there that’s not here on earth, or that’s more plentiful up there? That would make a big difference for us, uh, to go get after this?

Alex Ellery Well, well, there again, there are two aspects to this. Uh, most people at the moment, uh, particularly in the US are focused on trying to develop some kind of commercial application for, for Luna stuff. The lunar stuff that they’re, they’re particularly thinking about is water, and water can be split into hydrogen oxygen and that that could be used as fuel and oxidizer now essentially for launching things from the moon to say Mars or, or whatever. So they’re trying to create this market which serves a. Industry as it were, or, or some kind of space demand, a self-sustaining base on the moon as well. Yes. That that would be part of that kind of market. Um, how far we could make it sustaining. That’s another question entirely, which I think you’ll come to a little bit later. The other aspect, which I think is more important, is the longer term view, which is how do we make mining the moon relevant to every human being on Earth. And to me that is the more interesting question. I think there are some practical problems that we need to be solved on earth or solved for earth, which space mining and moon mining would potentially contribute to.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What are those problems?

Alex Ellery Energy, clean energy. We’ve got, you know, things like solar and, and wind and so on and so forth, and they’re, they’re, they’re ramping up very quickly. But it’s questionable whether they can actually provide a hundred percent of our energy needs. And remember, our energy needs are constantly evolving. We’re not, I’m not just talking about like, uh, emerging countries, you know, getting increasing demands of energy. I’m also talking about as technology progresses, we have more needs for energy. And currently it is growing faster than, uh, renewable sources can, can expand and this is likely to continue.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Alex Ellery And to me the, the obvious solution is solar power satellites, but launching from the them from earth would be a, firstly too expensive. Secondly, the energy going in would exceed the energy coming out of it. So the only real solution is to industrialize the moon and essentially build them there robotically that require a huge commitment. To developing the moon as a means to helping our own earth environment. What about Helium three, which as I understand it, you know, you mentioned clean energy. Is that the key to really unlocking clean energy on earth? Helium three is in this interesting one because this has been, uh, banded around for a long time. Take a step back. If we look at nuclear fusion, which is what Helium three would be useful. There’s, it’s true, there’s no, there’s very little helium three on earth. It’s very difficult to, to manufacture. And the moon represents the largest nearest source of Helium three. There are a couple of issues. One is that the helium three is very diffuse, and it’d be, although I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to extract it, it, it certainly would be a challenge to extract and also to keep cold enough to ensure there’s no boil off, so that those are technical issues that would occur on the moon in terms of the market. Fusion is great or potentially great, but the kind of fusion that we’re currently working on is the lowest energy type of fusion process, which is deuterium, tritium, uh, now deuterium tritium, uh, reaction requires the lowest amount of energy to make it work. If we go to Helium three and Deuterium, that requires a much higher energy input. We haven’t even got deuterium tritium working in a commercial context yet. The next stage two deuterium helium three, that could happen in sometime in the future, but I’m not convinced it’s going to be any time soon. You, you know, you’ve gotta be, you’ve gotta be talking a minimum of 50, 60 years away.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What’s the first step that has to happen in order for people to see. This is not, uh, an idea. This is not something out of a science fiction story. This is something that we are doing right now. What do we do first and, and how do we do it?

Alex Ellery The first thing is to just demonstrate that we can actually do something, something not even relatively simple. We can actually take, let’s say Luna Regolith. Put it into a machine and process it inside that machine and out pops a particular, uh, product, let’s say a, a 3D printed product. Essentially all the elements of this, of an industrial chain, relatively simply in a small box. Once we can demonstrate that, then that provides us with the opportunity to figure out how to scale it up.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When you look at this as a simple problem of space robotics and space technology, um, and you look at it practically, what are the biggest challenges that are gonna get in the way of actually, uh, extracting resources from the moon?

Alex Ellery Well, it depends on what resources you want to extract. If you look at the American approach, their focus is primarily in water, and the water is, is located primarily the polar regions. Now the polar regions are extremely cold. It’s around, you know, in these deep craters where you should never see the sun, where waters water, ice collect. The temperatures around about, it’s like 40 kelvin. That’s very, very cold. It’s only 40 degrees above, uh, absolute zero. And we have no experience in doing mining and things like that at these temperatures. There’s another OP opportunity as well. We could be mining minerals where we’re not limited to the, the polar regions. The moon is comprised of oxides and, and silicate minerals. We could extract oxygen from those and that provides you with. The largest proportion of mass required as oxidizer when you mix it with fuel. So we can generate seven eights of the mass require, uh, by mining minerals as opposed to mi by mining water. It’s a relatively small step to go from extracting oxygen from minerals to extracting metals outta minerals as well. We don’t have the 40 kelvin environments to deal with in that case. And to me, this, this makes better.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I know you mentioned that, um, the water can then be used to, uh, do things like launches, uh, from the moon towards Mars or wherever else. Are there other things that we’d need to take back to Earth and, you know, how does that work? I’m trying to imagine like tons of minerals going back and forth. Uh, and it, it feels like the resources required to do that would be prohibitive. Like what does that actually look like in practice?

Alex Ellery Not many people are talking about bringing minerals back to earth, at least at the moment. There was talk a few years ago bringing back things like platinum-based minerals from asteroids, for example.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Alex Ellery There is a potential possibility of mining the moon. For its rare earth elements. Yeah. I’m not really convinced about that, to be perfectly honest, cuz there are actually resources for rare earth here on earth, which would probably still be cheaper than bring them from the moon. But the potential exists to bring things back from the moon. One possibility is you could encase them in silica, which is manufactured on the moon. Silica is used as a, like a reentry shield material. So we could, in theory, send things back to Earth, but it’d be very complex to do. You’d have to like have, um, thrusters on board to make sure it lands in the. It was essentially enters at the right location, right. Then you’d have to recover it and and so on. I can’t really see that happening anytime soon.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Let’s assume we solve for those challenges. What does a world in which we are extracting resources from the moon and using them effectively look like?

Alex Ellery Well, it goes back to, to what, what I was suggesting earlier is instead of trying to bring material back from the moon, We should be building, uh, devices that stay in space and actually transmit energy back to earth. So we’re not brief physically bringing back any material, but we’re actually using Luna material to actually fo focus, to enhance our, our clean energy. You know, deep sea manganese nodules and things like that I think are gonna be far easier to access than, uh, bringing things back from the moon. One final thing.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Do you have any doubt that this is at some point going to become a reality? Are we just too far down this road and, and we need what’s on the moon too much?

Alex Ellery Well, I, I, I was very, very young when, uh, Apollo happened. Um, and the assumption was that at the end of Apollo, I always thought that by the time I grew up, I’d be living on the moon.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Right? Yeah. But it never happened. But we’re talking about that now.

Alex Ellery That’s the plan for For NASA and for China and the Russians, right? Yes. What I think is different is that we now have a private sector, which is involved. That changes the game trunk quite dramatically because it pro applies commercial pressures. Elon Musk has made it quite clear that he wants to go to Mars. That’s his primary focus, and he’s using the moon as a stepping stone to get him to mar. But I do think it really, if we’re going to make it robust, we really have to make it relevant to everybody on Earth. And I think clean energy is really the only way we can make space mining, space exploration, uh, industrialization of the moon relevant to people on earth.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Alex, thank you so much for this. Been a pleasure. Absolute delight. Thank you. Heather Exner Perot is the Senior fellow and director of Natural Resources, energy and Environment at the McDonald Lare Institute. Now that we understand a little bit of the science at play here, she will walk us through the geopolitical implications. Hello, Heather.

Heather Exner Perot Hello. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I wanna start just cuz I have no idea here, what rules currently govern, like the exploitation of minerals in space and I guess especially on the moon?

Heather Exner Perot Great question. It just so happens that, you know, I think when man first walked on the moon, you nation started to get involved in trying to govern outer space. And so the one that most people refer to as the 1967 outer space treaty, and it does include the moon, uh, and other celestial. And then there was a series after that.Uh, for example, international liability on damage, you know, in space, um, governing activities on the moon and other celestial bodies. Uh, registration of objects launched into outer space. So it isn’t, uh, you know, a ous in a way. It isn’t a wild west. There has been some consideration, but of course some of it is still theoretical, and so mining on the moon is, is still in a gray zone. The other thing about international law is that all treaties are opt in. Um, under our Westphalian system, no one has to follow, um, any treaties and you can, you know, come out of a treaty at any time if you think it’s in your interest. And so that is the, the caveat. That at the end of the day, you know, sometimes might makes right and people can pull out a treaties if they don’t think it’s fair to them. And of course we want a system that benefits everybody. If you can create a system and a treaty that benefits everybody, then, then you could expect that everyone will abide by it. So it sounds like it’s not technically the wild West, but anybody can treat it as the Wild West at any time. Well, I think for example, we say that, you know, there’s no declaring of sovereign. You can’t plant an American flag on the moon and say, now this is ours. It’s American. Right? And there is some precedent, you know, in, in the Antarctic, right? And we’ve done a pretty good job with the Antarctic treaty to say, this is, you know, no one owns this. We all have the same usage rights. We all have the same understanding. There will be no military activities here, and that’s worked very well for a few decades. So I think that lends some promise that we can, you know, do similar things, uh, in space. But I think space probably has more political and military kinds of aspects too. That maybe makes it a little trickier than Antarctica to decide on things.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But the point for this conversation for moon mining is, We can’t own the moon, but I think if you go up there and, and are able technically to be able to get some resources back, there’s no one that can say that you can’t do that. And that’s where we get into, um, I guess a second space race. Uh, if this is now something that’s possible or will be in the near future. What is the timeline here and who’s racing to figure this out?

Heather Exner Perot Well, it’s all the usual suspects. So obviously nasa, the Canadian Space Agency and, and European Space Agency are aligning on their ARD Miss missions, and that’s why it was in, in the news eight, that was in December, uh, when they had their first, uh, mission going back to the moon and plan to have, uh, men on the moon, humans on the on the moon again, by the early 2030s. And that’s not a long time , you know, when coming from the resource extractive, uh, industry, seven years is not a long time to figure out, you know, how to set up a mine, uh, let alone to do it kind of in the vacuum of space and with all those different challenges. So both, um, you know, the Artemis program and then Russian, China have jointly, uh, agreed in 2021 that they would set up their own permanent lunar, um, presence, lunar base on the south pole, the moon also. And so those are the two missions again, that are racing. Obviously the moon is a big place. And some of the, the competition comes in the fact that we both wanna go somewhere where we know there’s lots of water, um, that, that would help establish the, the permanent presence.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And so getting to the best spots on the moon, right, is, is maybe where there’s this element of competition you mentioned. That’s where, uh, the Canada Space Agency comes into play. What role can we play and, and how would we play it? What do we bring to the table? Obviously we’re not, uh, a superpower, but what can we do?

Heather Exner Perot Well, that’s a great question and there is lots we can do If, if only we have the political will. You know, this is an ex, this is expensive to go into space, and NASA no doubt will lead the way. But again, this is where moon Mining comes in. You know, we can say, well that’s probably a really great area, really great niche for Canada.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why is that?

Heather Exner Perot We’re excellent at mining. Right? But we do a lot of the, the finance of mining, the business of mining, we are, you know, world leaders in that kind of a thing. So it’s not just the extraction that we’re good at, we’re good at the business of mining. And then, you know, the simple fact of, of the geography that we do mine in remote off-grid, difficult to access locations.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Heather Exner Perot so obviously remote mining is, is up our out. If you ever look to any country, you know, I think. You would say, oh, Canada, there’s some similarities there. You can do those things. And then there’s the robotic, you know, everyone’s familiar with the space arm. And so I think a big part of it is the operations, the logistics of mining. And Canada is pretty good at operating in space and, and doing robotics in space. And some of the other, you know, maybe usual suspects on the mining side would not also have those particular skillsets, right? So not only do we have great mining and remote. Mining capacity, human resources in the country, but also we do have space experience. And so combining those two kind of very niche, um, fields into one. So it seems like, you know, of all the things, you know, that Canada Canon should contribute to bringing humankind back to the moon, seems like this is a good niche for us to fill. But you mentioned we still require the political will and I kind of want to know where we’re at in that process, if we’ve committed to anything, if we’re involved in this. Cuz I know, um, to the south of us, president Biden has already talked up, uh, the Artemis missions and going back to the moon, kind of selling it as that existential dream. Has Canada said anything about what we’ll be.

Heather Exner Perot It’s very interesting, and even I came into this thinking, moon mining really, you know, like, this seems like a far out idea, but again, it’s, it’s not primarily to bring resources to bring, you know, say rare earths or, or, you know, lithium or, or platinum, back to earth. It’s primarily to set up, uh, in the, in a medium term that that long-term human. on the moon itself, and so that you have to use moon resources to be on the moon. And so we, you know, where I’ve started looking to it is that our critical minerals, um, strategy does identify, you know, space mining. Hmm. So that tells me that there’s kind of more widespread mainstream recognition that this is happening and it’s going to be a thing. And then the Canadian Space Agency itself is promoting it, has spent some money, given some seed money to develop the concept of space mining, of how, how it might happen. You know, what are the technical challenges that we need to be focused on? So there is some probably I would say under the radar support in the federal government, and again, very much following in in NASA’s lead and the Americans lead, but it is on the radar. There is some little bit of money coming in, but I think is expensive to get into, and some of it is just, You know, is there’s maybe not a near term business case for it. It’s mostly being paid by, by public dollars to get on the moon and in the media. Long term though, there might be some very well some economic advantages to being very good at space mining.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Given the tension, um, in the world today and the fact that, you know, there are potentially billions and billions of dollars at stake up on the moon, how much, uh, fuel could this kind of resource race, I guess add to the fire? Well, that’s a good question, and to be fair, The first time we got into space, you know, in the fifties and sixties it was the cold, you know, it was the Cold War, right?

Heather Exner Perot I’m sure that very much sparked competition, incentivized competition, that you just didn’t want the other side to be better at something and you wanted to prove that you were, you know, more dominant and, and more of the great power. And then we had a, you know, a nice couple decades where there was really great cooperation in the International Space Station. And of course with the war in Ukraine, we are are seeing a lot of that. fracture. Russia has said that they’re going to pull out of the International Space Station, and again, China and Russia making their own plans to have their own lunar base. You know, the moon is one thing and the resources on the moon is one thing, but space itself is very strategic. Militarily, obviously.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Heather Exner Perot I actually had the chance to go to the Pentagon in December and, and we went, you know, saw the space. You know, of course the Americans have, have a branch, a new branch at the Pentagon of the Space Force, and I got my little Space Force water bottle. But this is, you know, this is serious. This is not science fiction. These are very real security threats and risks, and hopefully we can again manage it. Like Yetter Space Treaty kind of guides us too, so we can all benefit. So that we don’t militarize the space so that all of humankind can benefit from advances in the science in this area.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Heather, thank you for this. Like I said, fascinating and a little frightening.

Heather Exner Perot Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Heather Exner Perrot is the Senior fellow and director of Natural Resources Energy Environment at the McDonald Laier Institute, and our first guest, Alex Ellery, is the Canada Research Professor in space robotics and space Technology at Carleton University, that was the big story. For more from us, including all sorts of episodes about the future of space. You can head to the Big Story podcast. You can also find us on Twitter at the Big Story fpn. You can email us hello at the Big story podcast.ca. And you can, of course call us and leave a message. 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5. The big story’s available in absolutely every podcast player. One day somebody will listen to this podcast in a bass on the moon. I just have to keep this job long enough for that to happen. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Have a great weekend. We have a surprise for you on Saturday. And we’ll talk again Monday.