The Moon is Free

NPR’s Morning Edition news program this morning (well, yesterday, now, since my blog post was delayed) stated, as a prelude to stories about the Chinese and Indian space programs, that we (the United States) had “conquered” the moon 40 years ago, by landing on it. My thought was that we hadn’t so much conquered it as merely “touched” it. And we’ve done little more to tame it since then. I’m not sure that’s a problem, I don’t think there’s a big reason to establish a regular presence on the moon, or to establish an ability to exploit it’s natural resources, although in one of the follow on stories they mentioned that 100 tons of Helium-3 per year, which apparently is plentiful on the moon, would be enough to meet our current terrestrial energy needs. Maybe it is worth going back to the moon.