00:00In 2025, humans will have a unique opportunity – travel to the moon.
00:06So far, only 12 people have walked on Earth's natural satellite,
00:10but a private company is offering tourists a chance to change that.
00:14If you are hog-stinky-rich, you can pay $750 million to spend several days exploring the moon
00:22and watching Earth from a distance.
00:24You can even join unique scientific experiments.
00:28Now, humans also want to build their forever homes on the moon.
00:32In fact, NASA believes that North Americans may have their own share of the moon by 2040.
00:37And you don't even need to be an astronaut to buy a plot of land on the moon.
00:43Of course, billionaires are already making plans.
00:46Their first idea is to exploit natural resources.
00:50The moon is packed with stuff that is rare here on Earth,
00:53like helium-3 and many rare Earth minerals, or more precisely, rare moon minerals.
01:00But I digress.
01:01Hey, if you can get your hands on some of it, you may get even richer.
01:06First, helium-3.
01:07It's great for clean nuclear energy, but it's super rare on Earth because it escapes into space.
01:14The moon, though, has tons of it, enough to power Earth for a thousand years.
01:18Rare Earth minerals are not actually rare on Earth, but they're hard to mine because they react with oxygen.
01:26On the moon, hey, there's no oxygen.
01:29So we could easily get loads of these materials to make better tech, like electronics and batteries.
01:36Scientists aren't thrilled about this.
01:38For the first time, they have a chance to explore 4.5 billion years of space history.
01:43Because the moon's soil has stayed the same for billions of years.
01:48Studying its rocks could reveal lots of secrets about the universe's origins.
01:52But if billionaires mine the moon and destroy these rocks, all that knowledge could be lost forever.
01:59Another problem with exploring the moon is the size of it.
02:03The moon is big.
02:04But the best spots, the ones with water and sunlight, are limited.
02:08Most of the lunar surface is dangerous because of earthquakes or moonquakes, radiation, and meteorites.
02:16That means tourists, scientists, and mining companies would be elbowing each other in three small regions.
02:23The first region is called the peaks of eternal light because there's always sunlight over there,
02:29making it a great energy source for telescopes or human colonies.
02:33The second spot is the far side of the moon.
02:36Here, radio signals from Earth are not so strong.
02:40It's not just peaceful and quiet there.
02:42It's also a great place to set up a telescope and study the universe.
02:47The third place is called the pits of eternal darkness.
02:51It's where all the trolls on social media go on vacation.
02:54Nah, it's really because no sunlight reaches that area.
02:58This place is even better for scientists because they can use special astronomy tools
03:02to study the most distant parts of the universe.
03:05This is also where you can find about a billion tons of water.
03:10If scientists could visit the moon and study it, they would make amazing discoveries.
03:15But today, there are no international laws protecting space.
03:20No country can own the moon.
03:22But this can't stop a private mining company from calling dibs on a particularly good spot.
03:27In the past, a bunch of nations signed the Outer Space Treaty,
03:32and they agreed that space exploration was supposed to benefit all humankind.
03:37But exploring it is not cheap in the first place.
03:41Taking a single gallon of water from the moon to the Earth is extraordinarily expensive.
03:46And I bet not everyone can afford that.
03:48Human activity on the moon is also extremely dangerous because it might change its atmosphere.
03:55Now, to understand it better, let's look at the surface of the moon.
03:59This floating rock has many craters that have been forming for billions of years.
04:04When a meteorite crashes into the moon,
04:06fine dust called regolith, with particles so tiny they can cut like glass,
04:11rises into the air.
04:13This process once created the atmosphere of the moon.
04:16And this atmosphere is quite different from the atmosphere of Earth.
04:21A big rocket landing on the moon can launch this fine dust into the lunar sky.
04:27And the difference here is that the space objects crashing into the lunar surface are actually gentler.
04:32A rocket landing is so intense,
04:35it can increase the number of atoms in the sky 100,000 times.
04:39If the number of atoms in the atmosphere grows, the air turns into a dusty plasma.
04:45This means that you'll be breathing in air as toxic as the one that poisoned miners in the olden days.
04:50Such an atmosphere could end space tourism too,
04:53because it makes electronics malfunction and machinery shut down.
04:58Well, truth be told, our own presence on the moon is already dangerous.
05:03When scientists discovered water on the surface of the moon,
05:06they were super excited to study it.
05:08This was their chance to understand where this water came from,
05:12and even figure out how water appeared on Earth.
05:15But when our spacecraft land on the moon, outgassing occurs.
05:20This means that the water on the surface evaporates.
05:23This evaporated water can contaminate the water on the moon,
05:27ruining all scientific data.
05:29Because when astronauts take a sample of the lunar water to study it,
05:33they will get the water from Earth they have brought along.
05:36Bummer, really.
05:37And it's not just the water we contaminate.
05:41It's everything.
05:43A spaceship can carry any living thing from Earth to the moon.
05:47It can also bring extraterrestrial lifeforms back to Earth.
05:50This type of contamination is extremely dangerous,
05:54because it can put human lives at risk.
05:57Something similar happened when Europeans were exploring unfamiliar lands they came upon in the Americas.
06:03They accidentally introduced new microbes to the natives they met.
06:07And since the immune systems of the native population were not used to those new bacteria and viruses,
06:13they got sick and worse.
06:16At the same time, Europeans also became ill with diseases their bodies didn't know about yet.
06:21And even though moon tourism is not happening yet,
06:26humans are already littering the lunar highlands like their own backyard.
06:30In 2024, an artist named Jeff Koons sent a sculpture to the moon.
06:37The sculpture is a transparent box filled with spheres,
06:41and it got to the moon thanks to a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
06:46In each sphere,
06:46Coons engraved the name of a human he considered super-important to humankind,
06:52like Aristotle,
06:53David Bowie,
06:54and Leonardo da Vinci.
06:56Thankfully,
06:57you don't have to go all the way to the moon to see this sculpture.
07:00You can purchase an NFT of each sphere.
07:03Or not.
07:05Back in 1971,
07:07the crew members of Apollo 15
07:08also left a couple of things on the moon.
07:11A figure created by a Belgian artist
07:14and a commemorative plaque to honor other astronauts who couldn't be there.
07:20And it's not just art that humans dumped on the moon.
07:24If you take a walk,
07:25you might just stumble upon 413,000 pounds of materials left behind,
07:31including a gold olive branch,
07:33a falcon feather,
07:35a silver astronaut pin,
07:37a Bible,
07:39some golf balls,
07:40a hammer,
07:41and even leftover urine collection kits.
07:45Most of this stuff was left behind by the astronauts
07:48that explored space between the 60s and 70s.
07:52So you can find moon rangers,
07:54lunar probes,
07:55and orbiters that are decades old already.
07:58Now, to be fair,
07:59bringing back unnecessary equipment
08:01costs a ton of money.
08:03And back in the 60s,
08:05their priority was the safety of the astronauts.
08:07The sad truth is that the moon is already turning into an extraterrestrial landfill.
08:13And we don't even live there yet.
08:16But now, we want to settle there.
08:18So NASA is trying to get rid of all this trash.
08:21The good news?
08:22Hey, you can be part of this process.
08:25The space agency launched a competition called the Luna Recycle Challenge.
08:29And if you want to join it,
08:31you must find ways to reduce the amount of litter produced
08:34and recycle it into materials that can be used for space exploration.
08:39To win,
08:40you need to develop a way to completely recycle the trash that is on the surface of the moon.
08:45You will help science and win $3 million.
08:49And if you get this sum,
08:51well,
08:51you might finally afford a ticket into space.
08:54That's it for today.
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