Race to the moon for helium-3

Race to the moon for helium-3

According to Gordon Thomas' new book Secret Wars: One hundred years of British Intelligence - Inside MI5 and MI6, the United States and Britain on one side and Russia and China on the other, are engaged in a secretive operation to deploy a moon base to mine helium-3. Thomas states that British scientists have calculated that a mere six metric tons of helium-3 could meet Britain's annual energy needs well into the future. British scientists have determined that there are over one hundred million tons of helium-3 nine feet under the lunar surface.

Thomas writes that NASA and the European Space Agency have an ambitious joint plan to establish a lunar polar base to mine the helium-3 by 2014. The plan is to use giant space tankers to ship the gas to terrestrial landing sites where the gas would be transferred to new fusion reactors.

Thomas reports that MI-6 discovered in May 2007 that Russia's Roscosmos federal space agency and China's Lunar Exploration Agency had a head start over the Americans and Europeans on mining helium-3 on the moon. A joint Russian-Chinese lunar mission would mine helium-3, transport it back for domestic Russian and Chinese needs, and market the remainder to the rest of the world at prices set by Moscow and Beijing.

MI-5 and MI-6 began to explore the possibility of a space war between Europe and America on one side and Russia and China on the other over control of the moon's helium-3. Contingency plans were made to protect British helium-3 reactor and cargo landing sites in remote moorlands in Scotland and on the western part of England. Cyber-defenses were also planned to be beefed up to deter possible cyber-sabotage of incoming space cargo vehicles with a devastating impact.

Thomas' information on a major secret lunar mining project raises an important issue. With such a monumental cost associated with such a project, where is the money coming from? The intersection of the City of London banking infrastructure in the massive financial scandals of the past few years may yield important clues.