When you run out of milk, you duck up to the supermarket and buy some more, but where do you go when you run out of helium 3? Two intersteller mining companies are going into space, and they're looking for crews to help them.
Helium-3 (He3) is gas that has the potential to be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. If this fuel is successfully develped and supply can keep up with demand, it is thought that interplanetary spacecraft that can travel at 10 per cent of the speed of light (28968 km per second) will be possible. There is very little helium-3 available on the Earth, however, there are thought to be significant supplies on the Moon, and the prices that He3 fetches makes intersteller mining an attractive proposition. It is currently worth $500,000 per litre, $15,000 per gram or $2,000 per troy ounce, over 300 times the price of gold or platinum by weight.
The companies looking to cash in on the abundance of He3 on the moon are Planetary Resources, (who have investment backing from Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and film director James Cameron), and Deep Space Industries. Both PRI and DSI are calling on people to help them change the way humans explore the solar system, they are looking for collage students who are passionate about space, and people with "special skills" to help them in their projects.
So if you know you're lunar regoliths from your noble gasses, and you're not afraid of a bit of solar wind, sign up to advance the human dream.
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