Nothing wrong with moon mining. Reminds me of an old tag line I saw elsewhere - 'Earth First! We'll mine the other planets later'
It would be for Helium 3, a fusion fuel:
"....
An aggressive program to mine helium-3 from the surface of the moon would not only represent an economically practical justification for permanent human settlements; it could yield enormous benefits back on Earth.
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Samples collected in 1969 by Neil Armstrong during the first lunar landing showed that helium-3 concentrations in lunar soil are at least 13 parts per billion (ppb) by weight. Levels may range from 20 to 30 ppb in undisturbed soils. Quantities as small as 20 ppb may seem too trivial to consider. But at a projected value of $40,000 per ounce, 220 pounds of helium-3 would be worth about $141 million.
Because the concentration of helium-3 is extremely low, it would be necessary to process large amounts of rock and soil to isolate the material. Digging a patch of lunar surface roughly three-quarters of a square mile to a depth of about 9 ft. should yield about 220 pounds of helium-3--enough to power a city the size of Dallas or Detroit for a year.
Although considerable lunar soil would have to be processed, the mining costs would not be high by terrestrial standards. Automated machines might perform the work. Extracting the isotope would not be particularly difficult. Heating and agitation release gases trapped in the soil. As the vapors are cooled to absolute zero, the various gases present sequentially separate out of the mix. In the final step, special membranes would separate helium-3 from ordinary helium.
The total estimated cost for fusion development, rocket development and starting lunar operations would be about $15 billion.
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For an investment of less than $15 billion--about the same as was required for the 1970s Trans Alaska Pipeline--private enterprise could make permanent habitation on the moon the next chapter in human history.
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...n-mars/1283056
I'm not a fan of Newt, but the space program is the only way to save the planet. I doubt though that it would happen soley with private money though.
Pete