Neil Armstrong
OK, Houston, as I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realise there's a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.
NARRATION
NASA's Apollo program fulfilled a desire as old as humanity. It was the first time humans left Earth orbit and visited another world. Over four decades have passed since we last set foot on the moon, but now a new breed of explorer is looking skyward in the hope of returning. This time, for good.
Aaron Bonanno
Yeah, some people that you talk to, they're pretty surprised when you say you're doing space research.
PRESIDENT GEORGE HW BUSH
Back to the moon, back to the future, and this time, back to stay.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
When President Bush mentioned, 'Let's go back to the moon, but this time to stay,' I said, 'This is it. This is my job.' Now I can get involved.
Dr Graham Phillips
An outpost on the moon has been a staple of science-fiction for years, of course, but researchers at the University of New South Wales are actually planning to make this dream a reality. They've been working on ways to build on the moon, to source power, even to mine. In fact, they're planning a lunar space port that will one day launch journeys to Mars and beyond.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
And I think it's natural for human beings to look for resources, and mining provides resources.
NARRATION
NASA's prospecting missions have revealed our seemingly barren moon to be a treasure trove of priceless resources. Ripe for the picking are rare elements - a crucial ingredient for modern life's most indispensable technologies.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Rare Earth minerals, they're going into the iPads and the iPods and the electronics and this and that, and it's growing, so we need more.
NARRATION
The moon could even fuel our future with Helium-3, a non-radioactive nuclear fusion fuel. But unlocking this potentially bountiful cosmic quarry presents many challenges.
Aaron Bonanno
The natural environment of the moon is very different to Earth, so, you can't use the same techniques as you would on Earth.
Dr Graham Phillips
For instance, gravity is much weaker on the moon. It's about one sixth of what it is here on Earth, which means, if you want a machine big enough to have enough traction on the moon, it would have to have six times the mass. Now, launching all that weight from Earth would be prohibitively expensive, given 1kg costs about $25,000 to launch into space.
Aaron Bonanno
To put anything in space, it costs so much money and it takes so much energy to do it. So, it makes a lot more sense to actually get your resources that you want to use in space from space.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
So, we have to come up with new ways. The physics are different, there are so many different things. So, we have to basically start from scratch.
NARRATION
Even the moon surface is very different to anything on Earth.
Aaron Bonanno
Over millions of years, meteorites have just bombarded the surface continuously. It's very compact, but it's sort of broken up the solid structure into very fine powder.
NARRATION
It may look innocuous, but this sticky, abrasive material, called 'regolith', can wreak havoc with machinery. To see if their mining technology was up to the task, the team began to search for earthly material that mimicked the chemical and physical properties of moon dust.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
But here's the real stuff.
Dr Graham Phillips
So, this is the closest thing we have to moon dust on Earth?
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes, this is actually the by-product, and it is from a basalt quarry, where they quarry rock to make concrete.
Dr Graham Phillips
So, this is a waste product.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes, you're right. Actually, the quarries throw this away, because it's too fine to use for anything. They showed it to me and I thought, 'No!' You know, this is like gold for me, because it's so much, and they said, 'You got it for free.'
NARRATION
To make the mock moon dust, the material is sieved and separated by grain size. It's then recombined according to a specific recipe. The result is ALS1, a lunar soil simulant that closely resembles samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts. Beneath the loose surface layer, the regolith becomes increasingly dense and hard, so, for realism, they compact the simulant.
Dr Graham Phillips
OK, so, at 30cm down, it's kind of... Oh, yeah, that's quite solid. Gee, that's amazingly hard. I imagine mining that stuff would be a real challenge.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
That's exactly right. The problem is it's so dense that you can't just cut it like on Earth.
Dr Graham Phillips
Why not put explosives in, blow it apart and then dig it up.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
That's right. That's exactly how I started to deal with it, but you create the dust on top, and it stays up for 17 days, and you might even be able to see it from Earth.
NARRATION
They needed to find a different way. After many years of experimenting, Leonhard has come up with a mining technology to fit the lunar condition.
Dr Graham Phillips
It's called suction extraction with pneumatic transportation. It's a space vacuum cleaner, basically - a brilliantly simple idea for extracting the moon's mining wealth using gas pressure.
NARRATION
It's a highly efficient system, because it uses the powdery characteristic of the regolith and the low lunar gravity as resources.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
OK, ready?
Dr Graham Phillips
So, the big moment.
Oh, yeah, look at that! Gee, it pumps quickly.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes, yeah.
Dr Graham Phillips
Yeah, it races through. It's a remarkably clean process, isn't it? You're mining this sort of dusty stuff...
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes.
Dr Graham Phillips
..and it's just completely dust-free in the environment.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes.
NARRATION
Material is transported from the high-pressure entry to a low pressure exit point, where it collects. Eventually this will lead to a filtration unit, where the minerals are separated and sent to a processing plant. Leonhard's system requires minimal equipment to be sent from Earth, because many of the parts, like the glass pipes, can be made from moon materials.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
So, instead of bringing everything, let's just send the tools that help us to live off the land.
NARRATION
The mining operation will be predominantly automated, with robots doing the bulk of the hard labour. But this doesn't mean the moon won't be populated. Astronauts could use the moon as a launch pad to explore further into the solar system. But first they must build a base.
Aaron Bonanno
The structures that we're looking at building are basically to protect against radiation and meteorites, and the temperature effects of space.
Dr Graham Phillips
The problem with building structures on the moon is that you can't make bricks there like we do on Earth. After all, there's no water to mix with the dirt. So, the researchers have come up with an ingenious idea of mixing in other substances, like sulfur and polymers, with the moon dust, to create really strong, sturdy bricks.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
We are trying to use sulfur because it's on the moon. It's a natural product. And polymer we can also make on the moon. We would just need heat. That's available on the moon. And then we can create concrete out of waterless material.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
Yes!
NARRATION
Leonard's vision is to build domed structures to protect people and equipment. Inside, lightweight inflatables will create pressurised living environments. But how will we power this future moon colony?
Aaron Bonanno
If you're putting people there, or robotics or other equipment, you need energy to supply whatever you're doing.
NARRATION
During the day, solar arrays can generate electricity for habitats, life support systems, and machinery, but power needs to be stored for the lunar night, which can last for more than 300 hours in some places.
Aaron Bonanno
Our solution is using the resources of the moon to create a very simple technology - what we call a thermal battery. You just take the lunar soil, which is basically a basaltic material, sinter it into a solid block.
NARRATION
These bricks can store heat collected from the sun, which can be harvested later.
Dr Graham Phillips
So, this is the final cooked product.
Aaron Bonanno
Yeah, so, once we sinter it in the oven at 1,100 degrees, yeah, you get something like that out.
Dr Graham Phillips
Gee, it's incredibly heavy! You get the feeling it would hold quite a lot of heat.
Aaron Bonanno
For about a metre cubed material, you could store enough energy to supply about one kilowatt of electricity constantly over 300 hours.
Dr Graham Phillips
Really?
Aaron Bonanno
Yeah.
NARRATION
The moon's lack of atmosphere means there's no convective heat loss.
Aaron Bonanno
So, you can effectively have this battery store heat almost indefinitely.
NARRATION
As well as having these amazing thermal properties, the material is incredibly strong.
Aaron Bonanno
We just experimented with how much compressive strength the material can handle. 30 tonne on something like this.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
This is like steel, you know, even more than steel.
Dr Graham Phillips
It's really important to have these strong and heat-resistant building materials on the moon. One, to withstand the continual meteorite bombardment that happens up there, but also to be able to handle the tremendous heat of landing and launching space vehicles...
NARRATION
..enabling the moon to act as a stepping stone to other planets.
Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold
How about having a refuelling station to create a space economy that you can sell fuel for rockets to Mars, fuel for refuelling satellites?
NARRATION
This service station in the sky could resupply ships with propellants manufactured from the mined space resources. Whether ethically we should be mining in space is a debate we're still to have, but Leonhard believes moon mining in some form will be part of humanity's future, as we reach for the outer solar system and for the stars.
Topics: Space, Geology
Reporter: Dr Graham Philips
Producer: Roslyn Lawrence
Researcher: Roslyn Lawrence
Camera: Ron Ekkel
Greg Heap
Sound: Sarah Henty
James fisher
Editor: Vaughan Smith