moon isn’t just a rock floating in space—it’s a warehouse worth $10 million per pound of helium-3, a gas so scarce on Earth that it drives quantum computing and nuclear security. Rob Meyerson, who spent 15 years running Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, left that “cool space job” to chase something wilder: building the infrastructure for a lunar economy that doesn’t exist yet. His company, Interlune, wants to sift through moon dirt, extract this precious gas, and essentially create a supply chain from scratch. It’s a bet that the Artemis program—the first NASA moon mission to survive a presidential transition—signals something real this time around.

The core challenge is that helium-3 is buried in the nanometer-thin surface of lunar regolith, the fine dust covering the moon. Meyerson’s team has to excavate massive amounts of this dirt, sort rocks from sand, crush the grains to release trapped gases, then cryogenically separate helium-3 from regular helium at temperatures below 2 Kelvin—just two degrees above absolute zero. They’ve already built this tech in Seattle and discovered a surprising twist: they can deploy it on Earth first, tripling the U.S. helium-3 supply by 2028 by extracting trace amounts from terrestrial helium plants. This near-term revenue stream funds their real ambition—a fleet of robotic harvesters on the moon.

The timeline is concrete, not sci-fi. This fall, Interlune sends a camera to the moon’s South Pole aboard an Astrolab lander to scout helium-3 deposits. By 2028, they’ll land a 40-kilogram payload with a robotic arm to demonstrate excavation, sorting, and gas extraction. Eventually, small spacecraft—uncrewed, unlike Artemis—will shuttle back 3-5 kilograms of helium-3 per trip in a sphere less than a meter wide, each payload worth $50-100 million. But Meyerson is clear-eyed about dependencies: someone has to build the lunar rovers, the landers, the return rockets. He’s not waiting—he’s planning to build his own return vehicle that can handle four to five moon-to-Earth trips annually.

Surprising Insights

• The Artemis II astronauts reported the moon looks brown, not gray—a surprising observation about lighting and human perception that no unmanned spacecraft could share.
• Interlune will generate revenue from terrestrial helium-3 extraction before ever mining the moon, using the same cryogenic technology designed for lunar operations.
• China’s lunar program, not other U.S. startups, is Interlune’s main competitor—echoing America’s past mistake of ceding the rare-earth element supply chain to China.
• A single sphere smaller than a beach ball, shuttled from the moon, could be worth more than most Silicon Valley startups.
• The company’s name, Interlune, literally means “between moons,” reflecting its role as the missing link in a space economy that barely exists.

Practical Takeaways

• For entrepreneurs chasing “moonshot” ideas: Work backward from your grand vision and identify near-term revenue streams using the same core technology—Interlune’s cryogenic separation works on Earth and space.
• For investors watching the space industry: Follow the money to specific markets with demand curves you can model—quantum computing’s need for helium-3 is projected and quantifiable, unlike vague “space manufacturing” dreams.
• For young engineers and operators: Lunar surface operations is becoming a legitimate career path, not a fantasy. Companies need people who can solve nuts-and-bolts problems like dust mitigation and heat rejection in hard vacuum.
• For policymakers: Secure critical space resource supply chains before another country dominates them—America’s rare-earth element dependency is a cautionary tale for helium-3.
• For any technical founder: Keep your cool when a powerful backer (like Jeff Bezos) floods you with ideas. Focus and scale matter more than saying yes to everything.