Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/01/who-owns-the-moon-the-trillion-dollar-lunar-rush-for-helium-3.html
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I remember a debate on Reddit about moon cities …
I stand firmly that the Earth facing part of the Moon should be a UNESCO Heritage Site — 100% no visible development.
Our entire human heritage is built off of the wonder and mystery of the moon. Entire religions are founded on moon cycles.
It is every human’s visible heritage.
The time is now for us to collectively agree to this idea.
I do not want some billionaires putting a giant billboard on the moon …
Eat at Joes! — the technology is there now to make the moon a billboard
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we need to work to keep our violence and hate in Earth — no need to spread our worst qualities across the cosmos
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Deed the Moon to the United Nations.
Allow strictly monitored/inspected leased extraction of Helium-3
with royalties assigned to the United Nations in support of exploration
and settlement of our solar system.
At least, so far as known, we will not be stealing the resources of indigenous
inhabitants ~
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Thank goodness someone is on this. The helium-3 shortage here on earth has been palpable, definitely enough to justify the financial and environmental costs of shipping mining and refining equipment 384000 km.
Let me guess, this near future is just 20 years away. 
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There aren’t currently a whole lot of customers for that stuff though, at least until commercial scale fusion reactors come online (and who knows if and when that might happen.) I’m pretty sure that if a major mining operation were to bring tons of the stuff to earth that the price would drop dramatically.
Helium-3 mining always struck me as a justification for moon colonization that people came up with just because they wanted to build moon colonies anyway and they are desperately looking for any pretext that would make it seem commercially viable.
Per Wikipedia, the demand for the stuff has actually decreased in recent years:
So 6000 liters per year × a peak price of $2000 per liter means that the commercial market for Helium-3 is only about $12M a year? Damn, that’s even less than I thought, even at the historic peak price. And at a price of $100 a liter that’s just $600,000 per year.
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But also…
But hey, this is why we’re privatizing space exploration, so the billionaires can own the moon and fuck over space just like they’ve fucked over this planet… But I’m told it’s a GOOD thing here over and over again. But sure. Let’s just let them have it.
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The He3 hype is so weird. Currently we have little use for it - the fusion reactor that could use it is hypothetical (and hypothetically could also use more abundant substances). He3 on the Moon is also theoretical (we assume its there, due to exposure to solar wind) - and also theoretically only to be found in the thinnest surface layer of lunar regolith, so you’d need to harvest unimaginably vast acres of Moon dust to extract any (via a currently non-existent process), visibly altering its surface.
Given the cost of getting things to the Moon, the cost of operating there, the scale of the operation required (sucking up vast areas of the surface layer of lunar regolith and extracting the He3 via a process that doesn’t exist and could be pricey), and the cost of returning material to Earth, I’m not sure it would end up being any cheaper than $2000 a liter…
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Is it the whalers? The theme park owners?
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It is about 25% lighter than the Helium used in party balloons and blimps though, so maybe there’s an untapped commercial market: You could make your Zeppelins slightly smaller while getting the same amount of lift! 
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Finally our Steampunk fantasy can be made reality…
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On Twitter, I used to get ads for Helium-3 all the time. I wonder what was in my profile?
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The Moon belongs to what culture proves they saw it first. Until that’s resolved, we’re trespassing at best.
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Now, more, better Zeppelins is something I can get behind
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I’ve said it before, but silicon valley billionaires investing in rocket and space-tourism companies are a dime a dozen these days. (Musk, Bezos, Branson, Paul Allen, Robert Bigelow…) Boring. There are surprisingly few who are using their billions to build luxury Zeppelin fleets. Although apparently Google’s Sergey Brin is finally doing it:
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We should also try to avoid excessive disruption of the far side - it’s the best place imaginable for radio astronomy, completely blocked from Earth’s radio chatter.
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Ah, you just need a corporation with a - erm - bold approach to mining:
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Agreed — we need a region that is radio silent on the dark side of the moon. Maybe the entire southern hemisphere — with an agreement that in 100 yrs the radio silent would swap — allowing for different directions for the radio telescope could scan.
Put that in the UNESCO application
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So much this.
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