A GERMAN physicist has been working out ways of tunnelling to the centre of the Moon. Friedwardt Winterberg, an expert in nuclear and plasma physics, points out that valuable metals like copper, lead and zinc tend to concentrate deep down towards the cores of planets and their moons, so he thinks our Moon would be a great place to go to mine them.
Standard drilling kits aren’t much good for making such a deep hole: it’s 1740 kilometres down to the centre. Better, says Winterberg, to use a series of nuclear explosions. Crushed rocks embedded in the tunnel…
