Other Important Drivers

Race for Resources

China’s ‘Lunar Probe Project’ has explored that there is about 1 million tons of helium-3 on the Moon’s surface that could meet mankind’s energy demand (only a little more than 10 tons of helium-3 is available on the Earth). Meeting China’s power demand needs consumption of only 8 tons of helium-3, equivalent to 220 million tons of oil or about 1 billion tons of coal.[334] The Moon programme of Asian states has a bias towards resources mining including helium-3. Also, based on the samples received from various Apollo missions, it has been found that various platinum group metals (PGMs), indispensable for efficient fuel cell operation, exist on the Moon in diffuse quantities.[335] Based on various direct and indirect evidences, various studies have reached a conclusion that the Moon is an alluring mining site, ripe for the picking of rare elements of strategic and national security importance.[336] It appears that the Asian states have started the process of indentifying, experiment­ing and analysing the efficacy of Moon for resources mining. It may take another three to four decades to actually transport the resources from Moon to Earth (if any). The process for undertaking this task has already begun. Probably, it is the beginning of the currently ‘invisible’ race for resources on the Moon.