Chinese magnetic space launcher to revolutionize moon mining | Space

This lunar-bound launcher is straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Chinese scientists are planning to build an $18 billion magnetic space device to fling resources back to Earth in hopes of fixing the planet’s energy crisis, according to a new report.

The launcher, dubbed a magnetic levitation facility by researchers at Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering, will work like an Olympic hammer thrower by spinning before launching space material toward Earth, the South China Morning Post reported Sunday.

The plan could be linked to China’s joint space venture with Russia, in which the two countries proposed a research station to be built on the lunar south pole by 2035.

“The system’s technical readiness is relatively high,” the researchers said in the journal Aerospace Shanghai.

The launcher will cost a whopping 130 billion yuan ($18.2 billion), according to the South China Morning Post.

It will be primarily used to extract helium-3, an isotope present on the lunar surface, in hopes of fixing Earth’s energy crisis…