Lunar boom: we'll soon mine the Moon

"As history has repeatedly shown, where there are valuable minerals to be
unearthed, adventurous humans will arrive in droves – even if it means
battling extreme conditions and risking life and limb. So what will
happen when the next great “gold rush” in our history is quite literally
out of this world…" A landscape of the imagination, in this case inspired by Mark Maxwell and JAXA, shows part of a larger study for Astrobotic Technology a generation or two beyond their present production line. In the deep lunar south their notional "Moon Digger" vehicles are clearing, perhaps in some places sintering, a new landscape more familiar to human civilization, extracting billions of years of space sediment along the way [Mark Maxwell/Astrobotic/JAXA]..

Leonhard Bernold

Associate Professor of EngineeringUniversity of New South Walestheconversation.edu.au

As history has repeatedly shown, where there are valuable minerals to be unearthed, adventurous humans will arrive in droves – even if it means battling extreme conditions and risking life and limb.

So what will happen when the next great “gold rush” in our history is quite literally out of this world? And what kind of technology would be needed for the mining? After many ...