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Authors: John Lasker

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BOOK: TECHNOIR
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The best way to pay for it? Lunar Helium-3 and its emerging potential as a fuel for fusion, Schmitt testified. Schmitt also said that he doesn't have confidence the U.S. government can complete the job. He’s calling upon private and corporate investors to make a commitment.

            But the nation now determined to gamble on the Moon’s Helium-3 is not the United States, but China. Among all the nations and private investors interested in the potential of the Moon’s fuel, it is China that is steadfast on winning what it apparently feels is the Helium-3 race – one that could already be far past its starting point, and if Obama goes through with his plan of nixing the US Moon mission, China is way, way ahead. Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China’s lunar program, has told the international press, “We will provide the most reliable report on Helium-3 to mankind,” and, “Whoever first conquers the moon will benefit first.” Adding, “Each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world.”

            Another Chinese scientist, Luan Enjie, who worked in national defense, said in 2003 human beings must “learn to leave the Earth homeland...establish permanent study stations, develop products and industries in the space outside the earth, and set up self-sufficient extraterrestrial homeland.”

            “We would like to know what they're doing, but we don't know,” Kulcinski said, alluding to the wall of secrecy that surrounds most of China’s geopolitical, and in this case, astropolitcal motives. They have, however, completed some heavy labor towards Helium-3 research. Chang’e-1, which is still in orbit, has this as one of its official missions: “To measure the thickness of lunar regolith. Previous exploration data and study results show that the abundance of noble gas in lunar regolith is very high. One important task of our mission is to study and evaluate the resource of Helium-3 and other noble gases in lunar regolith based on the distribution of thickness of soil on the lunar surface.”

            Meanwhile, the U.S. government is generally, at least publicly, not interested in the idea. The Department of Energy is not conducting or funding any Helium-3 fusion research, DOE spokesman Jeff Sherwood said.

            “There are obvious challenges there,” he said of producing energy from the fuel. “It doesn't exist on the Earth.” Instead, the United States and dozens of other nations are spending billions on the construction of a new international tokomak reactor that will research fusion’s first-generation fuel combination: deuterium, which can be extracted from seawater, and tritium. The massive project, dubbed ITER, is now up-and-running in the south of France. Kulcinski said he and his UW team are not bitter about ITER’s disregard, or the DOE’s disinterest. Because one US bureaucratic giant, he said, finally may be taking some action.

            NASA has started its own preliminary research into Helium-3, or at the very least, considering it, said Kulcinski. After announcing plans for a lunar base by 2024, NASA stated that a research component of this future moon mission may be the study of lunar Helium-3 for “fusion reactors on Earth” to “reduce Earth's reliance on fossil fuels.”

            Some experts, however, speculate the United States has secretly been researching Helium-3 for some time, and has intentions on its monopolization.

            Not long after President Bush in 2004 declared the United States was headed back to the moon, Russian academic Erik Galimov told the
Izvestia
newspaper the US is deliberately not offering its true lunar intentions. Galimov added the United States’ moon colonization plan is going to “enable the U.S. to establish its control of the global energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out.” His theory is controversial, no doubt about it. But he doesn't offer much evidence to back it up. His focus may have been distorted by the Bush administration, but this White House’s major rationale for a lunar base was to establish a stepping stone for a mission to Mars. And while the Obama White House has not ordered NASA to back-off from the Moon completely, this administration doesn't seem too keen on going back. Instead, it suggests we should go directly to the land of red sand. NASA’s Moon-return research continues, nevertheless.

            Again, research many Russians say NASA is keeping mostly a secret. Here is what Russian cosmonaut, Valentin Lebedev, told a Russian broadcast news show, one that is respected and widely watched. “When the Americans return to the Moon, they will build a base of global control for all launches of missiles from Earth,” he said. “The US was also surreptitiously trying to undermine Russia’s space program,” he added. As for the Moon itself, “They will not allow on the Moon anyone who wants it.”

            Galimov and Lebedev’s conjecture was partially based on who currently sits on
NASA’s Advisory Council
, its pre-eminent civilian consultative arm. Leading the council is Schmitt. Fellow Helium-3 advocate Kulcinski is also on the council. Schmitt declined to comment for this book. But Kulcinski said their lunar Helium-3 research is separate from their NASA duties. “The NAC is purely an advisory council to Dr. Griffin,” said Kulcinski. “Our appointments to this advisory committee have nothing to do with our specific research interests.”

            But Bruce Gagnon said naming Schmitt and Kulcinski to the Advisory Council gives credence to Galimov's theory. Gagnon said lunar Helium-3 overtures by other countries have convinced Schmitt, Kulcinski, the White House and NASA to take action. “These guys have been working for years to set this up, and now they are moving quickly because they fear that other countries will get to these resources first,” Gagnon said.

            “One metric ton of Helium-3 can provide the same amount of energy as $2.5 billion worth of crude oil, according to Schmitt,” writes Gagnon on his web site. “Researchers estimate that some one million tons of Helium-3 could be obtained from the top layer of the moon. Used as a fuel for fusion reactors, estimates are that one metric ton of Helium-3 could be worth nearly $1.5 billion – about $46,500 per troy ounce, more than 120 times the value of gold.”

            Stephen Aftergood, who directs the Washington-based
Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy
, says those who wish to return to the Moon need a new rationale. Lunar Helium-3 offers an economic one, even if its potential as a super fuel is far from proven, he says. Aftergood doesn't believe a super race with China for lunar Helium-3 has begun. What’s ironic, a race to the moon against China – whether real or superficial – may be in NASA’s best interest, he said. “There are some who wish this would be the case – this race with China. They believe it would recapture the dynamic of the United States and Russia’s race to the moon,” he said.

Fifteen years ago, Kulcinski said that he and the UW fusion research team sought out federal funding for Helium-3 research. They were twice rejected with the same reasoning. “Each agency didn't think the other could do their job,” he said. “The Department of Energy told us, ‘We’re never going back to the Moon. We can't afford to.’ NASA told us, they didn't trust us – or anyone else – to make a fusion reactor.”

            There are those who still have a bleak outlook for any future Helium-3 success. “We just don't have a need for Helium-3. It’s not practical,” said Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, which helped build SpaceShipOne's engine and is also a client for the Missile Defense Agency. Benson said mining for Helium-3 on the Moon doesn't pass the “net energy analysis” test. In other words, with current technology it would take more energy to retrieve the fuel than the fuel would provide. Benson doesn't think too highly of fusion, either. He said the now non-operational tokomak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton, once the face of U.S. fusion research, was a “multi-million-dollar yearly pork barrel dead end. Nothing accomplished there was noteworthy.”

            Some say the most radical speculation related to Helium-3 is that the US, not willing to be second in any future must-have fuel scenario, will someday seize the Moon. The US will take it, whether shedding blood or not, with missile-defense technology. Which means US missile defense and its perceived image will have morphed – via its dual capabilities – into US space weapons (See chapter 3). Helium-3 mining bases will then be established. All protected by a near impenetrable constellation of Battlesats that will guard the Moon and shred anything that gets near it. The theory, as suggested by what the Russians had to say, is widely regarded as being legitimate; and it is obvious some governments, like the Chinese, are taking it very seriously.

            And what if Obama is serious about not going back to the Moon? Do the Chinese conquer the Moon, harness Helium-3 fusion and control the world’s fuel supply? Fifty years from now, does the US invade the Moon so to oust the Chinese?

            “Helium-3 is one of the reasons the United States never signed the
1979 U.N. Moon treaty
, which says no one can claim ownership of the Moon or have bases there. It’s like a modern-day gold rush, but Helium-3 could be far more valuable than gold,” says Gagnon.

            Gagnon has stockpiled an eye-opening amount of evidence from the US military and even Congress that cannot be dismissed. In 1987, for instance, Congress commissioned a book that would be “A frame of reference” related to the “Economic exploitation of lunar resources.” Democrat icon and famous astronaut Sen. John Glenn helped write the introduction. Oddly, the finished product had a militaristic edge. It was titled
The Military Space Forces: The Next 50 years,
and penned by John Collins, who at the time was a senior national defense researcher for Congress.

            This following paragraph from the book, in particular, is often repeated by Gagnon: “Installations worth defending inevitably will accompany economic exploitation of lunar resources and, perhaps eventually, the colonization of space. Military space forces at the bottom of the Earth’s so-called gravity well are poorly positioned to accomplish offensive/defensive/deterrent missions, because great energy is needed to overcome gravity during launch. Forces at the top, on a space counterpart of ‘high ground,’ could initiate action and detect, identify, track, intercept, or otherwise respond more rapidly to attacks”.

            Gagnon also tells audiences the US military is seeking the ultimate high-ground, the Moon, and there is some hard evidence. Within a Congressionally-mandated study and John Glenn wrote the prologue, no less. The ground we stand on is at the bottom of the “
Earth-to-Moon gravity well
,” says Gagnon, and it takes incredible amounts of energy to get up and out, and reach the plateau of space free of orbits. The bottom, claims US military scientists, is also where the enemy is most exposed when trying to reach the Moon. This particular gravity well is also defined as having the five Langrangian points. Five orbital positions spread-out amongst a small object and two larger objects (a spy satellite, the Earth, and the Moon, for example).

            This is what the John Glenn-endorsed book had to say about L1 and L2: “L1, the lowest energy transfer site...could be fitted with military facilities. Armed forces might lie in wait at that location to hijack rival shipments on return. L2 is a potentially important clandestine military assembly area, since cislunar and Earth-based sentinels cannot see it.”

            Besides space, Collins would get into the nitty-gritty of Moon combat. “Lunar foxholes would provide better cover than terrestrial counterparts, because the absence of air confines blast effects to much smaller areas.” He also discusses the prospects of using tactical nukes in a Moon-war scenario. “Strike forces on the Moon could choose from the full range of offensive maneuvers. Nuclear weapons detonated in atmosphere create shock waves, violent winds, and intense heat that can inflict severe damage and casualties well beyond the hypocenter.” But, in space “winds never blow in a vacuum, shock waves cannot develop and neither fireballs nor superheated surrounding air develop above 65 miles. Consequently, it would take direct hits or near misses to achieve required results with nuclear blast and thermal radiation.”

            One has to wonder what inspired the author to think that combat on the Moon is something so conceivable, so inevitable. Perhaps the author was indulging in too many science fiction movies and books. But there was factual history here. Going all the way back to 1959 – during the classic period of sci-fi flicks.

            In 1959 the US Army published a report entitled: “Project Horizon Report: A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Outpost.” The study stated that “The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential U.S. interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space....Any military operations on the Moon will be difficult to counter by the enemy because of the difficulty of his reaching the moon, if our forces are already present and have means of countering a landing or of neutralizing any hostile forces that have landed.”

            Shooting bullets on the Moon has always sparked some to wonder if a gun-battle on the Moon would be as lethal as on Earth. The answer is yes, bullets are more lethal; way more lethal, in fact. They have a much farther range than if fired on Earth because there’s no wind resistance. Furthermore the Moon’s gravity also allows bullets to travel an estimated 6 times farther than fired on Earth (Moon’s gravity is one/sixth the Earth’s). But by the time tanks and soldiers are moving across the Sea of Tranquility (where man first walked on the Moon), lasers will more than likely have replaced the old fashioned round, Collins wrote. “Space is a nearly perfect laser environment because light propagates unimpeded in a vacuum. Laser weapons, regardless of type (gas, chemical, excimer, free electron, solid state, X-ray) energy photons on the target. The beam burns concentrate a tightly focused shaft or pulse of radiant through.”

BOOK: TECHNOIR
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