For decades, people have rolled their eyes when helium 3 is mentioned in the same breath as the Moon. The story always jumped from Apollo rocks to futuristic fusion reactors, skipping over the awkward middle ground where skeptics raised their hands and asked how exactly any of this makes sense. Yet when you look at helium 3 through today’s lens, the case becomes far stronger and perhaps even funnier than most people expect.
Helium 3 is not a silver bullet waiting to ignite the fusion revolution. It is instead a very real, very useful, and very scarce isotope with a growing list of Earthbound customers. Quantum computing depends on it. Every dilution refrigerator needs helium 3 to cool qubits down to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. Without it, your superconducting quantum dream machine is just an expensive box of wires sitting in a chilly lab.
And the demand appears ready to soar. The global quantum computing market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 30 to 35 percent through the 2030s (Markets and Markets 2025; Fortune Business Insights 2024). By 2035 it could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, with every one of those systems requiring helium 3 cooling. That suggests helium 3 demand will scale in lockstep with one of the most hyped technology sectors on Earth.
The better comparison is not fusion but artificial intelligence. AI has supercharged demand for GPUs, data centers, and electricity. Every breakthrough in machine learning has rippled across chip design, cloud computing, and energy infrastructure. We suspect quantum computing will have the same compounding effect, only its limiting factor is not GPUs but helium 3. More qubits mean more refrigerators. More refrigerators mean more helium 3. And once quantum breakthroughs start hitting pharmaceuticals, finance, logistics, and materials science, the demand could multiply across entire industries.
Defense and security agencies rely on helium 3 as well. It is the gold standard for neutron detection, and neutron detection is one of those activities you want to be very good at if you value your borders and your nonproliferation agreements. Hospitals and researchers also rely on helium 3, especially in lung imaging where breathing in polarized helium 3 can show how air flows through damaged tissue. That is a market with life-saving stakes, not just scientific curiosity.
The problem is supply. Earth produces only about eight to ten thousand liters of helium 3 each year, mostly from decaying tritium stockpiles managed at the U.S. Savannah River Site (DOE Isotope Program; Newbury 2012). The entire U.S. inventory is about thirty thousand liters. Prices range from five to fifteen thousand dollars per liter depending on contract and purity (Edelgas Group 2024). That is enough to keep research labs running but nowhere near enough to support quantum computing at scale.
This is where the Moon enters the picture. Lunar regolith is sprinkled with helium 3 from billions of years of solar wind. The concentrations are tiny, measured in parts per billion, but the total resource base is vast. Estimates run into the hundreds of thousands of tons of helium 3 potentially recoverable. Extracting it requires processing enormous amounts of soil and heating it to hundreds of degrees, but that is an engineering challenge, not science fiction.
Even pilot returns of helium 3 to Earth could matter. A few liters here and there can be sold immediately to quantum hardware companies, defense agencies, and hospitals at premium prices. That would create a genuine commodity export, which in turn justifies building return capsules, surface equipment, and the downmass logistics lunar exploration requires. Once there is a steady trickle of helium 3 flowing back from the Moon, there is also a steady flow of cash, contracts, and investor confidence.
Investors are not hypothetical. Contracts are already being signed and early adopters are waiting (DOE, Interlune, Bluefors 2024–2025). Helium 3 may not be the end game, but it is emerging as the bridge commodity. It connects lunar mining to Earth’s most advanced industries and helps build the foundation for a permanent lunar presence.
So perhaps the joke will be on the skeptics. We do not need fusion reactors to justify helium 3. We only need to recognize that the most advanced industries on Earth already want it and cannot get enough of it. Just as AI pushed GPUs and data centers into the spotlight, we suspect quantum computing will push helium 3 and lunar mining. The downmass challenge combined with the economic drive for greater computing power may very well make the Moon’s strategic importance undeniable.
Sean Key is CEO of Better Futures, Inc, the producers of “The Unknown Quantity” podcast.