] I am skeptical that the U.S. Government can be counted on ] to make such a "sustained commitment" absent ] unanticipated circumstances comparable to those of the ] late 1950s and early 1960s. Therefore, I have spent much ] of the last decade exploring what it would take for ] private investors to make such a commitment. At least it ] is clear that investors will stick with a project if ] presented to them with a credible business plan and a ] rate of return commensurate with the risk to invested ] capital. My colleagues at the Fusion Technology Institute ] of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the ] Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc. believe that such a ] commercially viable project exists in lunar helium-3 used ] as a fuel for fusion electric power plants on Earth. For those who may not know, the Hon. H. "Jack" Schmitt was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 17, one of the last two humans to set foot on the moon, and the only professional geologist to visit the moon. Some interesting stuff in here. |