WHEN President Bush announced in January that he intended to send people back to the moon by 2020, he neglected to say what they would do once they got there. So on 1 April the House Committee on Science’s space committee asked five lunar experts for some advice.
First question, can we mine the moon for helium-3? This isotope, used in medical imaging and fusion reactors, is scarce on our planet but abundant in rocks retrieved by the Apollo missions. The answer wasn’t encouraging. “In any scenario, mining helium-3 from the moon will be a massive, difficult operation,” said the…
