Washington State University engineers have 3D-printed some simple-shaped objects using a simulant of lunar regolith, a mixture of loose dust, rock, and soil that covers solid bedrock. Shown here, Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke drives a core sample tube into the lunar regolith. (Source: NASA)
ChasChas, minerals are not to be dismissed--and they are also found on the moon. If a widescale disaster happened here on Earth, as in sci-fi novels and movies, and all cultures got sent back to the stone age, it would be really difficult to re-create current conditions primarily because we've used up most of the Earth's minerals that were available via mining, to forge metals. Those metals are what we used to build machines, including the ones that then built other materials. The history of industrial technology is an interesting and instructive study.
I'd like to point out that the materials upon which our technology is based aren't consumed and made to be unusable once they have been incorporated into our machines and infrastructure. That is to say, we have not "used up" the iron, aluminum and other raw materials and they will be more accessible to future post dark age humanity that they were to our ancestors. They will just be in other places and not in their native ores. They will be in land fills, salvage yards and in the infrastructure concentrated in urban areas. In fact, many of them will be in a form much more recognizable as useful to people in a dystopian future than they were the first time we dug them out of the ground. Granted, fossil fuels will be much harder to find but that should be the only resource disadvantage to future peoples trying to build a technological society from scratch.
This reminds me of the folks who think money spent on space exploration disappears into the vacuum of the void with the few insignificant pounds of materials that we actually send into space. That money feeds into the economy and allows many people to feed their families, pay their mortgages, etc. and is in no way a waste or lost forever.
emneumann, thanks for the comments, and glad you liked the article. Unfortunately, we *have* used up many, perhaps even most, sources of raw native ores. Scrap and reclaimed metals are by no means easily reusable at the same strengths as when originally forged. Aluminum makers claim theirs is, but as usual, that depends on several variables. The dystopic scenarios are not confined to science fiction.
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