Exploration and human settlement of the Moon is becoming a priority on both government and private organisations agendas. These ventures and others will require materials for construction, manufacturing and transport fuel. There are three potential sources for these raw materials; direct launch from the Earth, mining from Near Earth Asteroids or mining from the Moon. Known minable resources of interest on the Moon include but not limited to water and other volatile gasses, titanium (ilmenite), metallic iron and nickel, and the lunar regolith itself. This paper demonstrates a method for assessing a mining project on the Moon for supplying customers at that location, otherwise known as In-Situ Resource utilisation (ISRU). An opportunity cost approach is applied, which can be used in future optimisation studies similar to the Net Present Value (NPV) approach is used for mining projects on Earth.
CITATION: Pelech, T M, Dempster, A and Saydam, S, 2019. Developing the case for mining resources on the Moon, in Proceedings Future Mining 2019, pp 185188 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).