Several news agencies have reported on a new proposal from Chinese scientists to build a magnetic launcher on the Moon to deliver resources mined on the lunar surface to Earth.
“Scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering suggest that the magnetic levitation installation will work on the same principle as the hammer throw in athletics, but the rotation at increasing speed will be carried out before a cargo capsule is sent to Earth,” reported Sputnik.
According to “Interesting Engineering”, “Leveraging the Moon’s high vacuum and low gravity, it could eject payloads twice daily at about 10% of current transport costs.... The proposed launch system would use a 50-meter (165 ft) rotating arm and a high-temperature superconducting motor to launch capsules filled with lunar resources.”
The primary resource that would be extracted and exported would most likely be helium-3, a rare, non-radioactive, non-toxic, and non-flammable isotope of helium; it is a resource that is constantly replenished, since it is deposited on the Moon by the solar wind. Its primary use would be in nuclear fusion reactions in combination with deuterium, providing clean and almost limitless energy.
Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post reports that the launch station would “cost around 130 billion yuan ($18.2 billion) to build.” But the benefits would be great: “The paper’s co-author Chu Yingzhi told last year’s meeting of the China Association for Science and Technology that mining three to five tonnes of helium-3 a year could bring in revenues of 100 billion yuan.”
