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Rolls-Royce’s grandiose plan to mine the moon and Mars

Rolls-Royce’s nuclear plan to mine on the Moon: New space race for vital resources – and a launch pad to Mars, By ALEX LAWSON, FINANCIAL MAIL 20 September 2021  Rolls-Royce is developing a nuclear reactor that it hopes will be capable of powering mining operations on the Moon and even Mars, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. 

Dave Gordon, head of the company’s defence division, said it is studying how a micro-nuclear reactor could be used to propel rockets while in space at huge speeds. He revealed that Rolls-Royce is investigating whether that technology could then be redeployed to provide energy for drilling, processing and storage for socalled ‘Moon mining’. ……………..

No nation can claim sovereignty of the Moon under the Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967, but the US and Soviet Union brought back lunar soil samples in the 1960s and 1970s. Nuclear systems have been used on the Moon before. In 1969, the crew of Apollo 12 used a generator to provide the electricity to operate scientific instruments. ….

Gordon admitted that to bring the project to fruition would take ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’, but that early stage work could be achieved for far less……. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10004081/Rolls-Royces-nuclear-plan-Moon.html

September 21, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology