Fly me to the moon!

Fly me to the moon!

Nasa’s plans to send men back to the moon “appears to be on a unsustainable trajectory”. The cost of the Constellation programme has soared to $44 billion from $28 billion. And an independent panel of experts says NASA will need an additional $3 billion a year in extra funding.

It’s always alarming when an independent panel of experts casts doubt on the space programme, although I’m sure they know more than I do. But the spinoffs are endless. I’ll leave you to click through NASA’s own spinoff sites. I guess space exploration is a bit like Formula One – the geeks and petrol heads love it but the public has long lost interest.

I suspect the money will be found. The United States can not afford to sit out the race to the moon. New economic powers China and India are also making efforts to go to the moon with their own planned missions. Other nations have space programmes of varying degrees; Russia, South Korea, Europe and Japan.

Even Abu Dhabi is getting in on the act with its investment in Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

India realizes the technological spinoffs will propel its economic growth. And the costs are a fraction of what industrialized nations are spending on their programmes.

India’s Chandrayaan probe found evidence of water on the moon. Its moon project cost the nation 3.8 billion rupees ($78 million). China’s first probe to the moon cost more than double that $187 million. 

A part from the advancement of technology, there’s also a race on to extract Helium3. It’s a non-radioactive mineral that could become the power source to replace uranium, coal and other polluting minerals. Because the moon has no atmosphere, the sun has been bombarding the surface with its own nuclear reactions.

There is more than 1 million tonnes of Helium-3 on the moon and 100 tonnes would be enough to power the world for a year.

All we have to do is figure out how to mine Helium-3, bring it back to earth and extract power from Helium-3. And this is where international cooperation is necessary, and a solution to the U.S. funding problem is to outsource more work to India.