Why are we not mining Helium-3 from the Moon?

Because is too far away

thought the moon was made of cheese!

China will get it all and sell it to us.

Much easier to get it from a Gas Station than the Sea of Tranquility.

That is a genius answer. Did you come up with that all on your own? Why didnt i think of that?

The most likely answer is that we can't. Either we can't actually get to the moon or there something there that won't let us bring that stuff back.

Because Optimus Prime told us not to?

Can make it to the moon. No NASA. Convenient amirite.

Space clowns stole it for their balloon animals?

because it is on the dark side of the moon

Two good reasons:

Mining the stuff is not like finding a seam and shoveling into a hopper. The Helium-3 exists as a microscopically thin layer mixed in with everything else that is on the surface of the lunar soil. To "mine" it, you need to scrape cubic kilometers of soil then process those kilotons of raw material to extract the small amount of Helium-3.

Which means even with some really sophisticated robotics, to get a mining operation running you'd need a full-time crew of humans up there to keep the machines going. Which means a long-term base. Which means sending the equivalent of hundreds of Apollo missions there.

No nation has that kind of launch capacity or space capability. Not yet.



The other downside to Helium-3 is that Helium-3 fusion is scientifically plausible but has yet to actually be achieved. We are just barely reaching break-even with the easier D-T fusion, and we are decades from it being industrially scaleable.




So, sure, I see Helium-3 mining as possible one day. But not for at least another twenty years.

Because the gov wont sign off on it until BP and Halliburton are ready to strat the operation.