Does Future Moon Mining Need New Treaty?

Lunar mining is a concept that is coming of age with the planned international efforts to map the Moon's minerals in detail and sending more and more new exploration landing craft to the surface. The rapidly coming age has sparked renewed interest in space treaties with some advancing that new international law regimes are needed for moon mining while others advance the idea that the treaties in-place now are sufficient.

Jerry B. Sanders, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) lead for Lunar Surface Systems &ISRU Chief Engineer for Exploration Technology Development Program NASA-Johnson Space Center, recently posted to the LunarListServ this interesting information:

"To produce 10 MT of oxygen from regolith per year (enough for two Altair ascent vehicles + life support for a crew of 4 for a year) using the most inefficient extraction process (hydrogen reduction), it would require the excavation of a soccer field down 8 cm (~3 inches) over one year's time. To support reusable landers from surface to LLO twice per year, it would require ~10 times this amount of excavation. Besides hydrogen reduction, we are working on two other processes: Carbothermal which is 10 to 20 times more efficient, and molten electrolysis which is 20 to 40 % more efficient would require less material to be processed for 100 MT of O2 than is needed for 10 MT of O2 from hydrogen reduction and would most likely be selected once large production rates are desired," Sanders noted.

"The LCROSS spacecraft plume is stated to be about 10 Shuttle payload bays worth of material (http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/impact.htm). This is about half the mass of material required to be excavated for making 100 MT of oxygen in a year using the lowest yield process. Using carbothermal or molten electrolysis methods, ISRU and space mining would excavate less material in a year then LCROSS raised into the lunar atmosphere in seconds!!!!"

"To summarize. The amount of material being processed is in significant when looking at the total lunar surface, the product generated by mining/ISRU will open up new areas of the Moon for scientific exploration, and the environmental impact is less than what just happened with LCROSS. 'Taming' business and ISRU at this time is like telling the Pilgrims and the early settlers of the west that they could only cut down a small number of trees and limit the amount of water they used or it would spoil the new world. After 50 years of sustained lunar exploration and expansion, you may need your legislation. At the moment. It is in everyone's best interest to make lunar exploration more than just a government financed effort or it will die like Apollo," Sanders says with reasoned economic logic.