Let's talk about element número dos on the periodic table. Helium, baby. No, not the helium in the balloon at your birthday or at your final disco before San Francisco, Sandhya. That's helium-4 — one of the most abundant elements in the universe, the building block of pretty much everything.
We're talking about He-3. And I promise you, He-3 is far more interesting than its sibling — unlike the Hummer H3, which is a little rascal compared to its 10-mpg-averaging sibling, the Hummer H2.
Which, if we can take a second to appreciate how comical this line from Car and Driver is: “EPA fuel economy is 10 mpg city and 13 highway, although a 32-gallon tank allows reasonable range.” when describing the H2. 10-13 mpg?? A 32-gallon tank?? We've come a loooong way in efficiency. Which, weirdly, is exactly why He-3 matters.
Here's why: He-3 has several use cases — it's in gear that detects smuggled nuclear material at our ports, a potentially key component of our nuclear fusion energy future, and, the most in-demand case, cooling quantum computers. And how expensive is this stuff, you may ask? How about ~$20M a kilogram. Quite the price if you can get your hands on it. Bad news… theres not a lot of it around. It hardly exists on Earth. Small quantities here and there. Byproduct of the also-rare tritium — the hydrogen isotope that makes your watch glow at night. Aaaand boosts nuclear weapons.
But there is a place we’re all familiar with that has a lot more of it — and it’s in our backyard, kind of.
Enter Interlune.
Where do we go?
To the moon, of course. Why the moon? The one place He-3 shows up in real quantities is in solar winds — a constant stream of particles blasting off the sun, He-3 included, in every direction, all the time. Like Bob Seger on my Spotify.
So why isn't Earth covered in it? Because we've got an atmosphere and magnetic shield deflecting basically all of it before it ever reaches the ground. Thank you, atmosphere. Never really thought I'd thank it for a moon-mining company's business plan, but here we are.
The moon has neither. No atmosphere, no magnetic shield, nothing standing between it and the sun. So for billions of years, solar wind — and with it He-3 — has been slamming into its surface. Lunar dust specifically. All this time, He-3 has just been sitting on the surface waiting for someone — or something — to extract it. Because that’s what us humans do.
Cool. So He-3 is up there. Now how the hell does Interlune actually get something onto the surface, dig it out, and ship it back to Earth? I'll tell you exactly how.
Okay but how
You hitch a ride. Not your everyday stick-your-thumb-out type of hitchhiking — but then again, this is 2026, and people have got rockets to catch. Interlune is tagging along on one of SpaceX's rockets and has partnered with Astrolab and their rover for its first exploratory mission. First job — get a camera onto the surface to estimate how much He-3 is actually up there. Down the road — send a harvester.
And once Interlune is actually harvesting, their process is four steps — excavate, sort, extract, and separate. Built in partnership with Vermeer, their machine can autonomously dig through regolith on the Moon's surface. It digs, it processes, and it dumps the leftover dirt right back where it came from. Interlune's own words on the aftermath: “leaving the surface looking like a tilled field.” Like a garden in every suburban mom’s backyard.
Of course, not everything they extract is He-3. That'd be too easy. Interlune must deep-freeze the molecules it extracts to separate the He-3. That can be done with a conventional cryogenic distillation process, but Interlune is looking into alternative technologies for their separation step. Technologies that could prove more energy and cost-efficient.
Then comes shipping. Not your Amazon one-day delivery, but then again, they're trying to ship a product from 240,000 miles away. Interlune will rely on the ever-growing space industry to return its product to Earth — likely in the form of a space capsule, which I'm sure someone will be eager to produce with a $20M/kilo payload on board.
The guy who started it
Co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson. A guy who, if I had to guess, grew up and dreamed of space exploration. Rob went to the University of Michigan, where he earned an aerospace engineering degree. Following stints at NASA and Kistler Aerospace, Rob joined Blue Origin as one of its first employees in 2003. Over the next 15 years, Rob as President led and grew the team of 10 into a 1,500-person operation and one of the most consequential privately funded space exploration companies ever.
Co-founding Interlune with him: Gary Lai, also one of Blue Origin's original employees, who most recently led Blue Origin as Chief Architect.
Oh, and Interlune’s strategic advisor? Harrison Schmitt — Apollo 17 astronaut, the 12th and last man to walk on the moon. Schmitt has been an He-3 mining advocate since the 1980s. Now at the age of 91, he's getting his geological wish come true.
The honest take
Let's start with the money. Interlune's whole pitch rests on He-3 being worth ~$20M a kilogram. That price is justified by supply and demand — Economics 101. So what happens if demand falls apart? Technology moves fast. What happens if an alternative cooling method comes along? And if Interlune succeeds at real volume, they're diluting the exact scarcity their price depends on. These are all fair questions. But no business is without risk. And perhaps that doesn't matter — if quantum computing, nuclear, and national security demand keep rising as fast as they have been, the total market keeps growing too. Even at full output, Interlune probably can't scale supply fast enough to price themselves out.
Then there's logistics. Interlune is dependent on catching a ride there and back home. There's no named vehicle or signed contract yet for the Moon-to-Earth leg of the trip. But with how fast the space industry is expanding, I'm betting there'll be plenty of people lining up to fly cargo home.
And to give credit where it's due: Interlune is doing what nobody else has — building a full-scale excavator prototype, signing massive customer contracts, and getting NASA to co-sign a mission. Skeptical or not, Interlune's the furthest along at actually trying.
If they pull this off
Millions for Interlune. Cooling for the world's supercomputers.
If the harvester works, Interlune isn't just another company with a ChatGPT rendering — they're the supplier of one of the world's rarest elements, one that requires going off-world to find.
Cooling quantum computers may also just be the beginning. A readily available supply of He-3 could one day become fuel for nuclear fusion, arguably one of the most powerful and efficient clean energy sources we know of. Every big breakthrough starts with the basics, and He-3 might be one of the building blocks we've been missing here on Mother Earth.
Want to work out there?
Okay, Interlune's hiring is lean — two open positions at the moment. Available in Houston, DC, or Seattle. But with a lean operation, you'll likely engage with some of the most influential minds in private space enterprise in modern history. Nice to know the right people.
Highlighted role of the week → Mechanical Engineer, Hardware Development. Based out of their Houston facility, you’ll be building the actual vacuum systems and hardware for space resource extraction. Pay runs from $125-195K for their Level 3 band.
Open roles → https://www.interlune.space/careers#career-positions
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