Moon Shot: Lunar Mining

From Geographical, January 1:

Tech companies are racing to land private spacecraft on the Moon, with a view to mining its surface over the coming decades. But is it even legal and what could it mean for those left behind?

Naveen Jain clears his throat ceremoniously. ‘We want to go to the Moon – not because it is easy, but because it is great business,’ he says, altering the words President Kennedy used to describe the first Moon landing. Jain is the co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, the first of two private companies with a license to leave Earth’s orbit, land on the Moon and return with bits of it. ‘When we get our Moon shot, it will really show what entrepreneurs are capable of,’ he says. They hope to launch by the end of this year.

Moon Express is in the running for the Lunar XPrize, a $30million cash award for the first private company to land an unmanned craft on the Moon. Funded by Google, the prize aims to boost space travel and spur ‘the development of discovering and using space resources.’ It is a key part of a growing interest by billionaire companies in outer space fuels and minerals.

‘There are at least 50 private firms intent on figuring out how to extract resources from the Moon,’ says Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University, ‘despite the fact that such activity would fly in the face of the UN Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967, which is signed by 130 countries and declares the Moon as “province of all mankind”.’ Moon mining for private gains, she explains, is potentially illegal.

How to govern the Moon has never been more hotly contested. As the hype reaches fever pitch, a growing group of geographers are also becoming louder about what space means to our own world. They intend to change the question from ‘could Moon mining be done?’ to questions like ‘should it?’, ‘on whose terms?’, and how it might impact issues such as inequality and sustainability. Between them and the entrepreneurs, it is becoming increasingly clear that the fight for the Moon is an ideological one, and it has everything to do with issues on Earth.

THE FISHERMAN AND THE MOON
As trawler captain Zhan Qixiong headed towards a group of remote islands with his small fishing boat, he might well have expected trouble, but he would never have guessed the impact his journey would have on outer space.

It was the morning of 7 September 2010, and the almost-new Moon would have brought a particularly high tide. His destination – known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, or the Diaoyu Islands in China – are disputed territory between the two nations. As Zhan entered the contentious waters, he was confronted by the Japanese coastguard and rammed two of their vessels, supposedly in an attempt to escape. He was arrested by Japanese forces and held in custody for two weeks, causing public outcry in China.

This small event worsened the regional dispute between the two countries. Internationally, however, the incident began to warp into another narrative. Newspapers reported that China, which produced 97 per cent of the world’s supply of rare-earth minerals, was retaliating by blocking rare-earth exports to Japan. Despite both governments denying such a ban, the rumour was enough to stoke fears that China could use rare-earths as political leverage. To make matters worse, the incident occurred at a time China was announcing wider quota reductions – citing environmental concerns around its mines. In the confusion, the ‘rare-earth crisis’ was born.

‘Markets freaked out, and prices for some elements shot up 2,000 per cent in a short time,’ says Klinger, who sees the event as a key moment in this new ‘space race’. Though the shortage never materialised, the fear of it propelled the idea of Moon mining from the fringes of political discussion into the mainstream, she argues. Specifically, the price hike made rare-earths the target of the Lunar XPrize, with a number of the competitors stating that rare-earths were their end goal. In 2011, Jain spoke to the LA Times, stating ‘we know we can get these elements on the Moon’ as an alternative to being ‘held hostage’ by China’s monopoly.

But here’s the rub – rare-earths are not all that rare. While lunar missions have revealed deposits on the Moon, in fact, they are more abundant and accessible on Earth. Klinger notes that, ironically, the temporary price increase of 2,000 per cent is still several orders of magnitude below any hypothetical break-even price for lunar mining. ‘Besides,’ she says, ‘we only recycle one per cent of rare-earths that we already use.’

Though China holds the monopoly, it is not because of scarcity of rare-earths elsewhere, but because the nation produces the largest quantities at the cheapest price – owing to its low environmental regulations and labour rights. ‘Overall, we are so far from exhausting rare-earths that it doesn’t really merit calculation,’ she says. In spite of these realities, private companies such as Moon Express have made considerable headway in challenging international regulations concerning the ownership of outer space. Their attention has evolved from rare-earths to helium-3, a possible source of fuel if nuclear fission is ever achieved....MORE

Way back in 2011 we had mentioned Mr. Jain:

Indian-born Entrepreneur and Billionaire Moves Forward on Plans to Mine the Moon

A long way from Uttar Pradesh....

....Our securities attorny readers may remember Mr. Jain from his InfoSpace days.