Helium-3 da

Frontlines/Misc

AT No US Involvement

The US will get involved to make up for its depleting helium reserves.

Ouellette 11 writes¹²

Helium wasn’t technically “discovered” on Earth until about 1895, despite being abundant in the universe. Almost all of the global supply of helium is located within 250 miles of Amarillo, Texas; it’s distilled from accumulated natural gas and extracted during the refining process. Since the 1920s, the US has considered its helium stockpile as an important strategic natural resource, amassing some 32 billion cubic feet in an underground bunker in Texas, but for several years now, it’s been selling off that stockpile bit by bit to interested industrial buyers. Helium is used for arc welding and leak detection, mostly, although NASA uses it to pressurize space shuttle fuel tanks. Liquid helium cools infrared detectors, nuclear reactors, and the superconducting magnets used in MRI machines, too. The fear is that, at current consumption rates, that underground bunker will be empty within 20 years, leaving the earth almost helium-free by the end of the 21st century. This could be bad for US industry. Fusion Power? It also bodes ill for the prospect of fusion using helium-3, a rare helium isotope that is missing a neutron. Physicists have yet to achieve pure helium-3 fusion, but if they did, we’d have a clean, virtually infinite power source. Or so the theory goes. And that’s where the moon comes in. The moon’s lunar soil is chock-full of helium reserves, thanks to the solar wind. In fact, every star emits helium constantly, suggesting that one day, spaceships will carry on a brisk import and export trade to harvest this critical element — assuming we can figure out how to make such a process economically viable. But helium-3 isn’t the only resource the moon might have to offer. It could also be a source for rare earth elements, such as europium and tantalum, which are in high demand on Earth for electronics and green energy applications (solar panels, hybrid cars), as well as being used in the space and defense industries. China is the largest exporter of rare earth elements, but there are growing concerns over supply vulnerability as China drastically reduces its rare earth exports. Scientists know that there are pockets or rare earth deposits on the moon, but as yet they don’t have detailed maps of those areas. Potassium, phosphorus and thorium are other elements that lunar rocks have to offer a potential mining venture. Lunar Prospecting? And there’s more! In 2009, NASA bombed the moon — part of its Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission — and observed grains of water ice in the remnants of the resulting plume, as well as light metals such as sodium and mercury, and volatile compounds like methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This implies that the moon is chemically active — via a process called “cold grain chemistry” — and also has a water cycle. Where you have water ice, you have a potential mother lode for lunar prospecting of hydrogen. Of course, we’re talking about huge capital expenditures just to set up a mining base camp on the moon, and the economies of scale might not be there. If the benefits don’t outweigh the costs, we might never see bona fide lunar prospecting. But it’s a possibility that the US — not to mention China — is taking very seriously.

Useful Middle East Card

D’Souza et al 6 write¹³

Another palpable effect of He-3 on Earth would be the political change that the end of the oil monopoly over energy production will bring about. The present tension between Middle Eastern, oil rich nations and western nations might subside once the exclusive power that Middle Eastern countries exert in determining oil production quotas and prices is no longer as critical for global energy production. It is the view of many political analysts today that the Intifadas and the fundamentalist movement that we are experiencing today is in part fueled by the economic boom that oil producing nations are undergoing as a result of high oil prices (Rifkin, 2002). Whether this view holds or not, the situation in the Middle East is prone to change dramatically at the end of the oil age. For once, economies that depend on oil revenue will be forced to diversify their income sources. Such change will bring about revolutionary movements that may very well change the structure of society. Will this result in an even more unequal distribution of power and resources between developing nations and developed nations? Again the answer to this question resides largely upon which nations will have cheap access to energy sources and which are dependent upon others for their energy income. It is here 96 that adherence to the UN treaty prescribing that all space resources should be used for the advancement of mankind is critical. A possible scenario that might follow from this principle would be that a few nations would directly harvest, transport and exploit He-3. For the mining privileges on the Moon, which is noted as belonging to all of mankind, these nations would be obliged to pay either royalties to all nations, or distribute electricity to other nations as a form of payment. This is a positive yet not ideal scenario. It is positive in that under-developed nations would obtain electricity directly and from it could develop industry. Nonetheless, industrialization and economic growth necessitates much more than electricity. It needs international investment and commitment, which might or might not be linked to He-3 or other alternative energy sources.

Yudkowsky

Reducing the probability of existential disaster through space colonization is more valuable than preventing specific impact scenarios. Overly detailed impact predictions are improbable and create false perceptions of security.

Yudkowsky 6 writes¹⁴

According to probability theory, adding additional detail onto a story must render the story less probable. It is less probable that Linda is a feminist bank teller than that she is a bank teller, since all feminist bank tellers are necessarily bank tellers. Yet human psychology seems to follow the rule that adding an additional detail can make the story more plausible. People might pay more for international diplomacy intended to prevent nanotechnological warfare by China, than for an engineering project to defend against nanotechnological attack from any source. The second threat scenario is less vivid and alarming, but the defense is more useful because it is more vague. More valuable still would be strategies which make humanity harder to extinguish without being specific to nanotechnologic threats - such as colonizing space, or see Yudkowsky (this volume) on AI. Security expert Bruce Schneier observed (both before and after the 2005 hurricane in New Orleans) that the U.S. government was guarding specific domestic targets against "movie-plot scenarios" of terrorism, at the cost of taking away resources from emergency-response capabilities that could respond to any disaster. (Schneier 2005.) Overly detailed reassurances can also create false perceptions of safety: "X is not an existential risk and you don't need to worry about it, because A, B, C, D, and E"; where the failure of any one of propositions A, B, C, D, or E potentially extinguishes the human species. "We don't need to worry about nanotechnologic war, because a UN commission will initially develop the technology and prevent its proliferation until such time as an active shield is developed, capable of defending against all accidental and malicious outbreaks that contemporary nanotechnology is capable of producing, and this condition will persist indefinitely." Vivid, specific scenarios can inflate our probability estimates of security, as well as misdirecting defensive investments into needlessly narrow or implausibly detailed risk scenarios.

1^ Michael Brooks (PhD in quantum physics). “Who owns the moon? We're just going to have to get up there and find out.” The New Statesman. February 25^th, 2014. http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2014/02/who-owns-moon-were-just-going-have-get-there-and-find-out

2^ The Daily Galaxy. “China Launches 1st Moon Rover Mission to Search Out Natural Resources --"Does It Include Helium-3?"” December 2^nd, 2013. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/12/-china-launches-1st-moon-rover-mission-to-search-out-natural-resources-does-it-include-helium-3-vide.html

3^ Seth D. Baum, Ph.D in Geography from Pennsylvania State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University and scholar at Columbia University's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, “Cost–Benefit Analysis Of Space Exploration: Some Ethical Considerations”, Space Policy Volume 25, Issue 2, May, pg 75-80, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265964609000198

4^ Glenn Harlan Reynolds (professor of law at University of Tennessee). “Will China restart the space race?” USA Today. December 16^th, 2013. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/16/china-moon-astronaut-nasa-column/4031105/

5^ Marsha D’Souza, Diana Otalvaro, and Deep Arjun Singh. “Harvesting Helium-3 From the Moon.” An Interactive Qualifying Project Report submitted to the Faculty of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor Science. February 17^th, 2006. http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-031306-122626/unrestricted/IQP.pdf

6^ Lewis Reynolds (financial advisor and consultant to a wide range of companies, particularly in the energy industry). “Seven Dangerous (and Surprising) Side Effects of US Dependence on Foreign Oil”, American Surveyor. August 4th, 2010. http://www.amerisurv.com/content/view/7708/

7^ Hegemonic Stability Theory: An Empirical Analysis By: Jesse Hubbard Jesse Hubbard Program Assistant at Open Society Foundations Washington, District Of Columbia International Affairs Previous National Democratic Institute (NDI), National Defense University, Office of Congressman Jim Himes Education PPE at University of Oxford, 2010

8^ Glenn Harlan Reynolds (professor of law at University of Tennessee). “Will China restart the space race?” USA Today. December 16^th, 2013. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/16/china-moon-astronaut-nasa-column/4031105/

9^ Marsha D’Souza, Diana Otalvaro, and Deep Arjun Singh. “Harvesting Helium-3 From the Moon.” An Interactive Qualifying Project Report submitted to the Faculty of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor Science. February 17^th, 2006. http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-031306-122626/unrestricted/IQP.pdf

10^ Lewis Reynolds (financial advisor and consultant to a wide range of companies, particularly in the energy industry). “Seven Dangerous (and Surprising) Side Effects of US Dependence on Foreign Oil”, American Surveyor. August 4th, 2010. http://www.amerisurv.com/content/view/7708/

11^ RICHARD RHODES He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT, and currently he is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Rhodes is the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. It was the first of four volumes he has written on the history of the nuclear age. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995), Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007), and The Twilight of the Bombs (forthcoming in autumn 2010) are the others. Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety 14 DECEMBER 2009

12^ Jennifer Ouellette (has a blackbelt in jujitsu, lives in Los Angeles with a tall cosmologist named Sean). “This Moon Was Made for Mining (Helium-3).” Discovery Channel News. February 21^st, 2011. http://news.discovery.com/space/this-moon-was-made-for-mining.htm

13^ Marsha D’Souza, Diana Otalvaro, and Deep Arjun Singh. “Harvesting Helium-3 From the Moon.” An Interactive Qualifying Project Report submitted to the Faculty of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor Science. February 17^th, 2006. http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-031306-122626/unrestricted/IQP.pdf

14^ Eliezer Yudkowsky (Co-founder and Research Fellow of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence—a non–profit research institute dedicated to increasing the likelihood of, and decreasing the time to, a maximally beneficial singularity, one of the world’s foremost experts on Artificial Intelligence and rationality), “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment Of Global Risks,” Draft of a chapter in Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic, August 31^st, 2006, Available Online at http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf, Accessed 11-11-2010