Buried in a Reuters news story focused on the possible militarization of space, there’s a statement that should remove all doubt about whether or not it’s worthwhile to go back to the moon as soon as possible and establish a permanent base there.

Reuters states that scientists have said the moon “is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope — a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor.” John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy research group, is quoted as saying, “If we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be.”

According to an estimate by Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the moon’s helium 3 would have a cash value of perhaps $4 billion a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil. By e-mail to Reuters, he said that the equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 30 tons could meet all U.S. electric power needs for a year. Reuters reports that scientists believe “there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the earth for thousands of years.”

Is this true? Does anyone here know of grounds on which to contest these statements? (I personally do not have the technical background to evaluate them.)

If it is true, why isn’t the space advocacy community using this argument? Why isn’t President Bush offering this information in support of his proposal?

I have been saying for years that the only solution to the energy crisis, and thus to a wide range of problems on Earth, lies in space. But I have thought in terms of solar power satellites. If we can get this much energy from lunar resources, we may not even need them.