Lunar Helium-3 Fusion Drive

China’s successful December 2013 landing of their Yutu rover on the moon has brought a new focus to the importance of our planetary neighbor for the future of mankind. As has been highlighted by leading Chinese officials, the moon’s surface is filled with the a special fusion fuel, practically absent from the Earth—Helium-3. With China’s return to the lunar surface, they are getting closer to a program for fusion power that could be one of the most impactive scientific driver programs for the entirety of humankind.

The unique presence of helium-3 on the moon will provide for humanity an abundant and powerful source of fuel for unlimited energy on Earth, and may form the basis for exploration of and settlement on other heavenly bodies. Attaining this superior fusion fuel could be the keystone to any proposed program for economic development for any nation on Earth or for any advances in space. While the economy of the United States stands at the verge of collapse, hobbling along under the weight of its London-Wall Street money system, China is quickly advancing to develop helium-3 technology. Whoever masters this new source of energy will control the planet.

Helium-3 is really an anomalous isotope formed by the intense heat of the sun. When Helium is super-heated it becomes energized with a third orbit. He-3 is flung through the solar system from the sun by the solar wind at near the speed of light. It bombards the Earth as well as the moon, but on approach to the Earth it runs into our Van Allen Radiation Belts and seven layers of atmosphere and by the time it reaches the surface it has lost its outer orbit and mostly returns to ordinary Helium.

He-3 is a very coveted molecule here on Earth, so someone wondered if we could get it on the moon. When the University of Wisconsin examined some of the 1200 pounds of moon rocks that the Apollo astronauts brought back with them, they heated the rocks and out poured He-3 gas. When it was super-cooled down to a liquid, the researchers discovered they had found pure He-3 inside the moon rocks.

Just how valuable is this He-3 gas? If you could fill just one containment pile rod for a nuclear reactor with it, it would take the normal efficiency of 50 to 60% of fuel rods into the high 90's. Not only is it more efficient than fissile materials such as uranium and plutonium, but it is not radioactive. It is clean, safe thermal fusion power. One test tube of He-3 has enough potential energy to power every nuclear reactor on the planet for about ten years without any risk of radioactive damage. The street value for just one test tube of this would be on the order of two trillion dollars.

China has been on the back side of the moon for most of the last decade and is believed to already be harvesting He-3. All they need on the back side of the moon is a small craft like their Yutu rover to drive around and scoop up loose powdery dust that is found everywhere. There is so much He-3 up there that in one hour's time such a small robot craft like this could collect enough dust, turn its solar panels toward the sun to superheat the collected samples (easy to do since there is no interfering atmosphere), draw the He-3 gas out of the samples, pipe it over to the shadow side of the moon which is 450 degrees Fahrenheit cooler so that the gas instantly becomes a liquid; inject the liquid He-3 into a cylinder that may easily be projected from the surface into space where it can be retrieved by a mother craft and brought back to Earth where it can be by parachuted back to the surface and recovered. Easy-peazy. No human involvement to easily acquire trillions of dollars worth of a precious gas that may allow the Chinese to ultimately dominate the world.

The United States has shown no interest in such a recovery program. NASA has turned down proposals for just what the Chinese are now doing. Those who have controlled fossil fuels have ruled the world in the past century. In a world of abundant He-3, fossil fuels will have no future. Unless the West steps up, it too may not have the future it might imagine. World dominion may be China's for the taking.