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The most common elements on the moon are quite common on the earth too; I don't think the value in mining them will ever come from bringing the mined materials back to earth. The value is going to come from having and maintaining an established base on the moon. The moon is a high point in the earth's gravity well that's full of raw materials that can be used to build things that can go further out. Mining on the moon is going to be about building and supplying interplanetary (and maybe interstellar) spaceships, not selling jewelry back on earth.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_...




The most common elements, sure. It's the rare elements that are more interesting. Many of these are rare on both Earth and the Moon because they are iron soluble and sank to the core. On Earth they get replenished from either asteroid impact or volcanism, then plate tectonics and hydration cycles slowly move the material back into the mantle or away from the site of deposit. Those processes don't exist on the Moon, so there's been ~3.5bn years of bombardment leaving precious-metal rich deposits on the surface of the Moon, where they remain until someone comes by to pick them up. You'll find that most of the Moon is boring rocks only a geologist could love, and then a bunch of super highly concentrated ores at deposit sites. And these deposit sites are not hard to find either. Just look for craters...


Though a jewelry made from Moon elements would probably have a ten-fold price tag than the Earth’s counterpart, because it’s from the Moon.


Maybe at first, but not once they're mass-produced on the kind of scale that would be needed to justify the cost of moon-based mining.




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