Claire Elizabeth Vo — The Moon is rich with water and in the commercial space age, we're going to be rich with the Moon.

The Moon is rich with water and in the commercial space age, we're going to be rich with the Moon.

I don’t believe it. In the space I’m from, there’s not water on the moon and Pluto is a planet.

Following November’s news of the discovery of water in a crater on the south pole of the moon, recent data from a joint NASA/ISRO scan shows more than 600 metric tons (590 imperial tons) of water on the Moon’s north pole. The water likely settled there over the Moon’s long history, collected from floating dust and comet tails. What’s important about this discovery in light of the commercialization of the space industry is that it makes the Moon an attractive target of future business. The main components of rocket fuel are hydrogen and oxygen, meaning a rocket could take off from the Earth and fuel up at the Moon before taking off for elsewhere.

Our collective actions over the past few decades point to a future in which space is a Capitalism. The Moon provides a number of opportunities and it’s conveniently located right in our cosmic backyard. H20 plots could be claimed or bought and the raw materials harvested and refined for use by rockets—which, if the current trend continues, will be privately owned as well—leaving the Earth. More daring businesses could fund searches of the Moon for Helium-3, an isotope of Helium with two protons and a single neutron (as opposed to common Helium, which has two neutrons). Helium-3 can be used in nuclear fusion, the same process which takes place in stars like our Sun. Fusion produces significantly more energy than any other efforts we’ve made (including nuclear fission, the process which takes place in bombs and nuclear power plants). Due to a number of factors conveniently true of the Moon, Helium-3 should in theory be present in abundance but we’ve yet to make a significant effort to track it down. Helium-3 is our most promising hope for a clean-burning, non-fossil fuel that would satisfy our energy needs in vast excess.

There is a lot of money to be made on the Moon and discoveries such as this do well to increase its already high market value. It’s very likely that today’s students will be leaders of tomorrow’s lunar industry.