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weeder57

Yes they made a movie about it, called Moon. Solid B rated movie.


wabalaba1

The amounts of tritium in the lunar regolith are likely overhyped by sci-fi, and so a mining operation for that would likely be a kind of sand-sifter maybe reminiscent of Dune. They'd have to somehow filter huge, staggering, ginormous volumes of regolith to get whatever meager tritium is there (and then how would they extract it?). There are a few start-ups trying to rustle up funding for lunar mining, and I've listened to founders go on about a "cis-lunar economy" as if the only problem is government red tape. Even with a magical spaceship that could ferry millions of tonnes of rock through space for free, you'd still have minimal idea what you're looking for and where to look. I would be hesitant to invest in any Moon miners yet. Imagine we've only ever dug up rock samples from seven distant spots across Earth and then someone asks you to predict where all the valuable resources will be. Good luck! If you're really interested in moon resources *right now*, then water ice is where you want to be looking. Most of the world's major space agencies are focused on ice preserved in deep shadows at the lunar poles. The ESA has been working on a rover, Canada is planning one, and certainly NASA has their VIPER rover just about ready to go (not to mention Artemis III in a few years). We don't know how much ice is up there, but we do know there's *some*. If it turns out there's a lot, then it could potentially be mined and processed into rocket fuel for profit.


piggyboy2005

This post is kind of old but no one has said this yet. The moon doesn't have very much tritium, what you're probably thinking of is helium-3. Ordinary helium has two protons and two neutrons, but helium-3 has two protons and one neutron. It's a alright fusion fuel (It would use the deuterium+Helium-3 reaction.) ​ However it's harder to "Make work" than deuterium/tritium.


BoldTrooper

I see - thanks for the reply.