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Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside?

An odd story appeared on X claiming that China is very interested in the Moon, and is in fact already mining Helium-3 there.

As I note, the noted science fiction film Moon from 2009 used helium-3 mining on the moon as a central plot point. (See my previous 2021 article China Treating Helium-3 On The Moon Seriously for more details on helium-3 mining.)

Helium-3 is a key component in dilution refrigerators, which are cooling systems for superconducting quantum computers. These refrigerators use a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4 to achieve temperatures as low as just a few millikelvin (mK), almost absolute zero (-273.15°C or 0 K).

Science fiction fans have been thinking about lunar mining for generations. In the 1930 classic Brigands of the Moon, scientifiction writer Ray Cummings describes a lunar mining operation:

The third building seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff. Braced tunels were hewn penetrating back and downward into the vein of rock.

The work was over. The borers had been dismantled and packed away. At one end of the cliff the mining equipment lay piled in a ltter. There was a heap of discarded ore where Grantline had carted and dumped it after his crude refining process had yielded it as waste. The ore slag lay like gray powder flakes strewn down the cliff.
(Read more about a 1930's lunar mining operation)

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