How much progress has China made in its lunar Helium 3 project since 2003?

Question

http://space.com/missionlaunches/china_moon_030304.html

On March 3, 2003, in an article published by the People's Daily news outlet, Luan Enjie, vice-minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense and director of the China National Aerospace Administration (CNAA), blueprinted his country's lunar plans and use of Helium 3 as an energy resource for earth.

Chinese space officials view the Moon as a milestone effort in a multi-step space program, not only useful in strengthening its technological muscle, but also to out-distance other countries in utilizing the Moon in the 21st century.

"The Moon has become the focal point wherein future aerospace powers contend for strategic resources. The Moon contains various special resources for humanity to develop and use", Luan said. In particular, the space official pointed to Helium-3, a resource unique to lunar soil. "[It] is a clean, efficient, safe and cheap new-type nuclear fusion fuel"

Under international law does the US landing on the moon confer mineral rights? How could the moon be declared a nation/territory? Does the Law of the Sea extend to space?

Answer 1

This article on Space.com from 2000 shows the Chunese weren't the first to think of this,

Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium-3 as the perfect fuel source.
By Julie Wakefield
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 05:30 pm ET
30 June 2000

Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium 3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, non polluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim its the fuel of the 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any of it is found on Earth. But there is plenty of it on the moon.

Society is straining to keep pace with energy demands, expected to increase eightfold by 2050 as the world population swells toward 12 billion. The moon just may be the answer.

"Helium 3 fusion energy may be the key to future space exploration and settlement," said Gerald Kulcinski, Director of the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo 17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt.

Cash crop of the moon

When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface.

"Helium 3 could be the cash crop forthe moon," said Kulcinski, a longtime advocate and leading pioneer in the field, who envisions the moon becoming "the Hudson Bay Store of Earth."Today helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil, he estimates. "When the moon becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."

Fusion research began in 1951 in the United States under military auspices. After its declassification in 1957scientists began looking for a candidate fuel source that wouldn't produce neutrons. Although Louie Alvarez and Robert Cornog discovered helium 3 in 1939, only a few hundred pounds (kilograms) were known to exist on Earth, most the by-product of nuclear-weapon production.

Apollo astronauts found helium 3 on the moon in 1969, but the link between the isotope and lunar resources was not made until 1986. "It took 15 years for us [lunar geologists and fusion pioneers] to stumble across each other," said Schmitt, the last astronaut to leave footprints on the moon.

For solving long-term energy needs, proponents contend helium 3 is a better choice than first generation nuclear fuels like deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen), which are now being tested on a large scale worldwide in tokamak thermonuclear reactors.Such approaches, which generally use strong magnetic fields to contain the tremendously hot, electrically charged gas or plasma in which fusion occurs, have cost billions and yielded little. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER tokamak, for example, won't produce a single watt of electricity for several years yet.

Increases production and safety costs

"I don't doubt it will eventually work,"Kulcinski said. "But I have serious doubts it will ever provide an economic power source on Earth or in space." That's because reactors that exploit the fusion of deuterium and tritium release 80 percent of their energyin the form of radioactive neutrons, which exponentially increase production and safety costs.

In contrast, helium 3 fusion would produce little residual radioactivity. Helium 3, an isotope of the familiarhelium used to inflate balloons and blimps, has a nucleus with two protonsand one neutron. A nuclear reactor based on the fusion of helium 3 and deuterium, which has a single nuclear proton and neutron, would produce very few neutrons -- about 1 percent of the number generated by the deuterium-tritium reaction. "You could safely build a helium 3 plant in the middle of a big city," Kulcinski said.

Helium 3 fusion is also ideal for powering spacecraft and interstellar travel. While offering the high performance power of fusion -- "a classic Buck Rogers propulsion system" -- helium 3 rockets would require less radioactive shielding, lightening the load, said Robert Frisbee, an advanced propulsion engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California.

Recently Kulcinski's team reports progress toward making helium 3 fusion possible. Inside a lab chamber, the Wisconsin researchers have produced protons from a steady-state deuterium-helium3 plasma at a rate of 2.6 million reactions per second. That's fast enough to produce fusion power but not churn out electricity. "It's proof of principle,but a long way from producing electricity or making a power source outof it," Kulcinski said. He will present the results in Amsterdam in mid July at the Fourth International Conference on Exploration and Utilizationof the Moon.

Size of a basketball

The chamber, which is roughly the sizeof a basketball, relies on the electrostatic focusing of ions into a dense core by using a spherical grid, explained Wisconsin colleague John Santarius,a study co-author. With some refinement, such Inertial Electrostatic Confinement(IEC) fusion systems could produce high-energy neutrons and protons usefulin industry and medicine. For example, the technology could generate short-lived PET (positron emission tomography) isotopes on site at hospitals, enabling safe brain scans of young children and even pregnant women. Portable IECdevices could bridge the gap between today's science-based research and the ultimate goal of generating electricity, Santarius said.

This fall, the University of Wisconsin team hopes to demonstrate a third-generation fusion reaction between helium 3 and helium 3 particles in the lab. The reaction would be completely void of radiation.

"Although helium 3 would be very exciting,"says Bryan Palaszewski, leader of advanced fuels at NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, "first we have to go back to the moon and be capable of doing significant operations there."

Economically unfeasible

Indeed for now, the economics of extractingand transporting helium 3 from the moon are also problematic. Even if scientists solved the physics of helium 3 fusion, "it would be economically unfeasible,"asserted Jim Benson, chairman of SpaceDev in Poway, California, which strives to be one of the first commercial space-exploration companies. "Unless I'm mistaken, you'd have to strip-mine large surfaces of the moon."

While it's true that to produce roughly 70 tons of helium 3, for example, a million tons of lunar soil would need to be heated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius) to liberatethe gas, proponents say lunar strip mining is not the goal. "There's enough in the Mare Tranquillitatis alone to last for several hundred years," Schmittsaid. The moon would be a stepping stone to other helium 3-rich sources,such as the atmospheres of Saturn and Uranus.

Benson agreed that finding fuel sourcesin space is the way to go. But for him, H2O and not helium 3 is the ideal fuel source. His personal goal is to create gas stations in space by mining asteroids for water. The water can be electrolyzed into hydrogen or oxygen fuel or used straight as a propellant by superheating with solar arrays."Water is more practical and believable in the short run," he said.

But proponents believe only helium 3 can pay its own way.

"Water just isn't that valuable," Schmitt said. Besides the helium, a mining process would produce water and oxygen as by-products, he says.

Answer 2

2003: Brother Ali - Shadows On The Sun Bumpy Knuckles - Konexion CunninLyguists - Southernunderground Electric Company - Life's A Struggle (I'm not sure if this came out in '03 or '04) Gangstarr - The Ownerz Hieroglyphics - Full Circle Immortal Technique - Revolutionary, Vol. 2 Inspectah Deck - The Movement Little Brother - The Listening Louis Logic - Sin-A-Matic Pete Rock - Hip Hop Underground Soul Classics PMD - The Awakening Shabazz The Disciple - Book Of Shabazz: Hidden Scrollz Soul Position - 8 Million Stories Supernatural - The Lost Freestyle Files Vakill - The Darkest Cloud Viktor Vaughn (MF Doom) - Vaudeville Villain Wildchild - Secondary Protocol I missed 2002, can you add a vote for my albums? 2002: Abstract Rude - Making Tracks Afu - Ra - Life Force Radio Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow Capital D & The Molemen - Writer's Block: The Movie Count Bass D - Dwight Spitz DJ Babu - Duck Season Vol. 1 Jean Grae - Attack Of The Attacking Things Journalist - Scribes Of Life Jurassic 5 - Power In Numbers Kool G Rap - The Giancana Story Lone Catalysts - The Catalysts Files Motion Man feat. KutMasta Kurt - Clearing The Field Nas - The Lost Tapes Non Phixion - The Future Is Now People Under The Stairs - O.S.T. Planet Asia - Still In Training Scienz Of Life - Project Overground: The Scienz Experiment Talib Kweli - Quality 7L & Esoteric - Dangerous Connection Various Artists - 8 Mile Original Soundtrack Various Artists - Essential Underground Hip Hop Vol. 1 Various Artists - Fat Beats Compilation Vol. 2 Various Artists - Rasco Presents 20,000 Leagues Under The Street Vol. 1 X - Ecutioners - Built From Scratch

Answer 3

I think that statement was all hype and no substance. Helium-3 is proposed as a fuel for fusion reactors, but after billions of dollars and decades of effort the world has yet to make a fusion reactor that can make any useful power at all. Even the experimental reactors that have produced some tiny amount of power for a fraction of a second do not burn Helium-3, they burn hydrogen. Finally, although there is more helium-3 on the Moon than there is on Earth, it is still extremely rare on the Moon. Rarer than gold on Earth.

Answer 4

The idea of the Moon becoming a country seems like a good one, to prevent rapacious nations from robbing the Moon of its natural resources. The same logic could equally be applied to Antarctica.

Would the new country join the United Nations? It could get expensive for its ambassadors to attend meetings!

But to try and answer your question, I have two comments and a news clipping:

1) The most up-to-date news stories are likely to be in Chinese and hard to access therefore,
2) It may be hard to unravel fact from propaganda as it must be important to the Chinese leadership to catch up with and surpass the "Paper Tigers" of American Imperialism

A news item from 2004 says

China To Host Int'l Meeting On Lunar Exploration

From Peking to Luna City
Beijing (SPX) Dec 17, 2004
China is scheduled to host the Eighth International Conference on the Exploration and Utilizationof the Moon in July of 2006, the Chinese Society of Astronautics said Thursday.
Sources with the society noted that the location and the host city for the 2006 meeting has yet to be decided by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG).

According to a declaration adopted at the Sixth International Conference on the Exploration and Utilization held late Nov. in India, the next International Conference on Exploration and Utilization of the Moon (ICEU) will be held in Montreal, Canada Sept. 2005, and it will be followed by a full ICEU to be held in China in July 2006.

The conference was sponsored by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG), whose members are from the world's space agencies.

About 200 scientists from 17 countries, including India, China, Britain, the United States, Australia and Russia, attended the sixth ICEU meeting held from Nov. 22 to 26 in Udaipur, India, which focused on new and planned missions to the Moon as well as roadmap concepts for long-term exploration of the Moon and utilization of lunar resources.

Abdul Kalam, president of India addressed the meeting with recommendations for international activities in exploration of the Moon, "for the benefit of humankind."

Source: Xinhua News Agency

That conference will have just taken place and reports of it may perhaps shed some light on what you want to find out?

Answer 5

I checked out the 8th ILEWG confereence, just concluded in Beijing; the Declaration they passed doesn't really get to grips with the issues of utilising the moon's resources (who can mine there? who will benefit?), beyond saying we need to protect the moon. They seem immersed in technical details and to have lost sight of the legal moral and ethical issues,

"8th ILEWG International Conference on Exploration and Utilization of the Moon - Lunar Beijing Declaration

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Friday, July 28, 2006
Source: European Space Agency

More than 240 experts and 300 students from 18 countries met in Beijing from 23 to 27 July 2006 for the 8th ILEWG Conference on Exploration and Utilization of the Moon, kindly and effectively hosted by CNSA, with support from CASC, LEPC, CSSAR, CAECC. Based on the deliberations and opinions, the participants have prepared the Lunar Beijing Declaration.

We salute the SMART-1 team for a successful technology and science mission, as the spacecraft approaches its grand finale. This small spacecraft has initiated an exciting International Lunar Decade that will inspire a new generation of lunar explorers.

Within the next two years, four independent spacecraft (SELENE, Chang'E 1, Chandrayaan 1 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) will orbit the Moon carrying an extensive array of sophisticated science and exploration instruments. Our understanding of the Moon and its resources will be revolutionized when the rich array of data from this flotilla is analyzed by scientists and experts around the world.

Since the first phase of lunar exploration is centered on remote-sensing observations, we endorse the following actions as being of long-term mutual benefit:

1. Internationally coordinated analyses should be carried out to facilitate the validation of data sets produced by different instruments and to enhance the usefulness of information acquired by multiple spacecraft

2. A small number of specific targets are recommended to facilitate both the cross-calibration of different instruments and to train young explorers in lunar science issues. After initial calibration, data should be made available for coordinated analyses by the international community

3. All solar monitor data from lunar orbital missions should, to the extent possible, be made available as rapidly as possible. Cross correlation of this information will improve calibration of all the instruments dependent on knowledge of solar fluxes

4. Every effort should be made to coordinate development and utilization of a common, improved Lunar Coordinates Reference Frame

5. Lunar mission teams are encouraged to archive final mission data products in a PDS-compatible form, to implement international standards for access, and to support Unicode, or other necessary format

6. The establishment of Common standards for S-band spacecraft communication, with potential for common tracking operations and backup support to other missions, if necessary

7. A coordinated campaign to provide data cross-check and validation for modern-era missions that have overlap in coverage, with data and experience from Past missions (including. archived and digitized Apollo and Soviet-era lunar data) is recommended

8. Information about the five impact events/probes [SMART-1, Chandrayaan-1, LCROSS, SELENE RSAT and VSAT] and subsequent impacts of lunarcrafts should be coordinated with other space missions. Ground-based and space-based measurements are encouraged for near-side events. All of the planned four orbital missions are asked observe the SMART-1 impact site. Before, after, and real-time measurements should be planned by all spacecraft that are in orbit during the impact events

To strengthen exchange between lunar experts and to enhance collaboration, we recommend to international science and space organizations join in and support the International Lunar Decade.

For the subsequent phase of Lunar Global Robotic Village and preparation for human exploration, we further recommend:

9. To promote use of standardized telecommunications, navigation, and VLBI support for future orbiter, lander and rover missions. We propose that ILEWG and agencies study the opportunity to embark some payload technologies for navigation and guidance on orbiters and landers as part of a Global Moon Navigation and Positioning System.

10. Lunar Missions should document their plans for end of operations. Before completing their mission, future orbiters could be placed on frozen stable orbits where they can participate in a joint infrastructure for data relay, aid to navigation and lunar internet, in addition to landed surface beacons

11. Recognizing the importance of the geophysical studies of the interior of the Moon for understanding its formation and evolution, the necessity for a better monitoring of all natural hazards (radiation, meteorites impacts and shallow moonquakes) on the surface, and the series of landers planned by agencies in the period 2010-2015 as an unique opportunity for setting up a geophysical network on the Moon, we recommend the creation of an international scientific working group for definition of a common standard for future Moon network instruments, in a way comparable to Earth seismology and magnetism networks. We encourage interested agencies and research organizations to study inclusion of network instruments in the Moon landers payload and also piggyback deployment of a Moon Geophysical and Environmental Suitcase

12. The importance of protecting the Moon becomes more urgent than ever before, as we enter a decade with many planned lunar exploration missions, including orbiters, impactors, penetrators and landers. We encourage space agencies to give their attention to the protection of the Moon for sustainable exploration, research and utilization. A dedicated task force should be set up to study this issue and produce a recommendation for all future missions

13. Lunar Exploration is ideal for outreach activities that are accessible and inspiring for the next generation of explorers. We encourage student participation in lunar payloads and missions. We propose to use milestones of lunar missions for public outreach events promoting exploration, space science and technology

We reaffirm our commitment, with the international lunar missions and research community, to prepare the way for global participation in the extension of human presence on the Moon and beyond, for the benefit of all mankind.

Beijing, July 27, 2006

Unanimously approved by the participants"