From helium-3, lithium, iron, nickel and titanium, to tylium, turbinium, pergium, berynium and opus, whether nudging an asteroid too close to Earth, cloning lunar miners to save costs, or mining the outer reaches of the Solar System to survive, here are some movies and TV shows about mining in space.
This list is presented in no particular order and the results of the exercise suggest that astro-mining in the movies is as rare as the prospect of finding a mountain of mica on the Moon.
Beyond the extraction, some of the films feature miners trading the drill for the fight where the plot is more about survival than mining and the ‘miner’ job title is just a starting point for the action.
First published online: 15 March 2021
This update: 23 February 2026
Moon Zero Two (1969). Set in the then-future of 2021, the Moon is depicted as a bustling outpost in the midst of colonisation. The plot follows a freelance salvager hired to capture a massive sapphire-laden asteroid parked in lunar orbit and guide it to the surface for processing. The gemstones are destined to upgrade the rocket technology required for the expansion to Mercury and the Jovian moons. However, the mission takes a dark turn when a miner mysteriously vanishes; his sister enlists the salvager only to discover her brother was murdered for a different prize: a massive nickel deposit located at the asteroid’s intended landing site. Marketed as the first “Space Western,” the film leans heavily into the genre’s tropes, featuring low-gravity shoot-outs between brightly-suited astronauts and the era’s signature racy costume designs for the ladies. Watch | DVD
The Cusp (1996). In a future where Earth’s population has reached 26 billion and exhausted all natural resources, the planet’s last hope rests on a massive iron-nickel asteroid being towed into a lunar Trojan orbit for mining. However, a group of environmental extremists views the project as merely a band-aid for a dying world and plots a global reset to “cleanse” the planet back to nothing more than bacteria. An infiltrator on the mission sabotages the navigation controls, masking the asteroid’s true velocity and trajectory. Instead of being captured into a stable lunar orbit, the rock is now a kinetic weapon on a collision course. The last surviving crew member is left struggling with a desperate attempt to nudge the asteroid’s flight path to skim off Earth’s atmosphere—even a fractional deviation is enough for impact. Watch
Moon (2009). Set in the near future, Earth’s energy crisis has been solved by the large-scale harvesting of helium-3 from lunar soil to power clean fusion reactors. The operation is managed by a lone worker on a three-year contract, tasked with overseeing the automated harvesters and shipping fuel canisters back to Earth. Following a rover accident, the worker wakes up back at the base—and suspects all may not be as it seems. Revisiting the crash site he discovers an identical version of himself—leading him to the startling realisation that the mining operation is staffed by a cycle of clones. To bypass the costs of recruitment and transport, the controlling corporation utilises a subterranean stockpile of genetic duplicates, retiring each worker into an incinerator at the end of their term under the guise of a trip home. The story concludes with the original donor on Earth remaining oblivious to the industrial exploitation of his identity, until a surviving clone manages to stow away in a return shipment pod to Earth. Watch
For All Mankind (2019-2026). While this epic show begins in 1969 as an alternate history of the space race, it naturally evolves from early lunar exploration into high-stakes interplanetary mining. In Season 1 (1970s), after the Soviets beat the US to the Moon, both sides drill for lunar ice in Shackleton Crater to produce the fuel necessary for permanent bases. By Season 2 (1980s), mining shifts to lithium for Earth’s battery industry, sparking a lunar resource conflict that nearly triggers a nuclear war. Season 3 (1990s) introduces the privatisation of space and the automated harvesting of helium-3 for clean fusion—and while this solves the climate crisis, the resulting collapse of the old energy economy leads to mass job cuts and domestic terrorism.
In Season 4 (2000s), the mining focus shifts to asteroids. The initial capture of the metal-rich asteroid Kronos ends in disaster; a manufacturing error in the anchor bolts, caused by a botched imperial-to-metric unit conversion, renders them unfit to secure the rig. The stakes peak with 2003 LC “Goldilocks,” a Jupiter Trojan containing more iridium than has ever been mined in the history of Earth. But instead of a Mars orbit insertion, the plan is to use a gravity assist to slingshot the asteroid toward Earth’s lunar orbit—a move that would render the Soviet’s monopoly on iridium exports obsolete. However, a handful of Martian colonists taking refuge with the North Koreans override the engine burn commands and bring the asteroid into Martian orbit, securing the future of Mars and the space program.
Season 5 (2010s) premieres on 27 March 2026. Where will the mining go next? Watch
The Expanse (2015–2022). Set in a colonised 24th century Solar System, this saga initially centres on the systemic exploitation of the Asteroid Belt by the inner planets, Earth and Mars. Detailing the grimey reality of living in space, the series features more asteroid name-dropping and rock-hopping than a geologist could shake a pick at. The Belter working class survives by harvesting the most vital resource in the Solar System: water ice from Saturn’s rings, processed into life-sustaining oxygen. The story ignites when the destruction of a massive ice-hauler pushes the three major powers—Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets Alliance—to the brink of war. Following separate leads in overlapping stories, a Cererian cop, a UN politician, and the disparate crew of a commandeered Martian gunship uncover a conspiracy involving stealth technology, weaponised asteroids, and the Protomolecule—a biological entity retrieved from Phoebe that turns out to be a two-billion-year-old alien interloper. Once unleashed, this self-replicating machine builds a massive ring gate out beyond the orbit of Uranus, opening the way to thousands of new, resource-rich planetary systems—and another blood-soaked gold rush. Watch and don’t skip the Intro.
Outland (1981). Set in the near future on a titanium mining outpost on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, the story follows a Federal Marshal who uncovers a narcotics ring supplying high-potency amphetamines to the workforce. The drug allows miners to work continuous shifts, days at a time, driving record productivity and lucrative bonuses, so neither the corporation nor the workers are complaining. But prolonged use triggers violent psychosis and suicide, forcing the Marshal into a solitary stand against the drug ring. While the film focuses more on the high noon aspect than the mined ore, immense effort was put into the production design to create a plausible, mining outpost setting. But it’s really just a space western with all guns blazing—exactly what the filmmaker said he was shooting for. Watch
Moon 44 (1990). It’s the year 2038, Earth’s natural resources have been used up and there’s a corporate battle to take control of the richest planetary bodies to mine. On the remote outpost of Moon 44, the theft of Galactic Mining’s autonomous mining shuttles by the rival Pyrite Defense Company leads to an undercover agent being sent to investigate. Spoiler alert: it’s an inside job. While the movie is about the theft of the resource, it never explicitly states what they’re digging up that the shuttles are carrying—something converted into solid fuel—and it’s tempting to presume pyrite. When a film opens with a text crawl stating that “multinational corporations have taken control of the universe,” you know exactly what to expect—and it delivers with all the finesse (and volume) of a pneumatic drill. It’s a perfectly watchable movie through all the fog and blue filters, provided the volume is off and the subtitles are disabled. Watch
Prospect (2018). A freelance prospector and his daughter travel to a toxic but lushly forested moon in search of rare gemstones. These valuable minerals, known as aurelacs, are biological “gems” that grow within fleshy pods containing lethal, corrosive spores—and harvesting them requires the precision of a surgeon. Their mission to collect a massive hoard—the “Queen’s Lair” (or the motherlode, if you like)—descends into a struggle for survival when the father is killed during an encounter with rival prospectors. The girl is forced into a alliance with one of the killers in order to navigate the forest, where they have to contend with unstable settlers and the constant threat of the poisonous atmosphere breaching their spacesuits. The story ends with a desperate escape on a mercenary ship, as they abandon the hostile moon with nothing but their lives to show for their efforts. Watch
Infini (2015). Located on a frozen planet in the far reaches of the galaxy, the mining outpost O.I. Infini extracts a mineral aggregate known as Opus, a highly volatile energy source found only there. The operation is halted after a mysterious event results in the deaths of 1,600 personnel and the discovery that a single payload exposed to Earth’s atmosphere would trigger a global catastrophe. It is eventually revealed that the “mineral” is actually a dormant, primordial lifeform that becomes a predatory organic ooze upon thawing. The plot centres on a Search and Rescue team deployed via slipstream technology to intercept a rogue survivor who has prepped a contaminated payload for transport to Earth. This is more of a biological hazard thriller than a space mining movie. Watch
Star Trek: The Devil in the Dark (S1, Ep. 25) (1966). The Enterprise responds to a distress call from Janus VI, a subterranean mining colony whose vast deposits of precious metals and rare earth elements supply the needs of a thousand planets. The operation has ground to a halt after the opening of a new level to mine pergium—a vital power-source mineral—disturbed a lethal, rock-eating creature known as the Horta. This pulsating, silicon-based, botryoidal rock monster is sabotaging machinery and killing miners, threatening the Federation’s mineral supply chain. However, a Vulcan mind-meld by Spock reveals that the creature is not a mindless monster, but a sentient mother. The silicon nodules the miners have been destroying are actually her eggs, and she is simply defending her nest from the encroaching mining drills. Watch | Watch
Battlestar Galactica: The Hand of God (S2, Ep. 10) (2004). Early in this series, the fleet is running critically low on tylium, its primary fuel source, leaving the fleet stranded and scouting nearby systems for supplies. Tylium is an exceptionally rare ore; without a new source, the fleet will be forced to use the last of their reserves for a final, desperate jump to the nearest star system in the hope of finding a habitable world. A last-ditch sweep of a nearby asteroid field detects a massive deposit—enough to fuel the fleet for several years—but frak, there’s a catch: the Cylons have already established a heavily defended mining base there, and it’s the only source within 12 light-years. They need to seize the ore, but they have to do it without using high-yield explosives that would trigger a radioactive chain reaction, rendering the volatile tylium inert and useless. Watch
Another Life (2019-2021). The series begins when a massive alien artifact—resembling a gyrating, Swarovski-style Möbius strip—arrives on Earth. Communication efforts fail until the object shows some reaction to classical music played at infrasound and a scientist surmises that the artifact arrived in response to the music of Mozart that was beamed into space in the then-past of 2026. A mission to locate the artifact’s source quickly devolves into chaos due to an onboard mutiny by a notably scantily-clad crew. Facing a life-support crisis, the team detects a nearby planet where they can scavange oxygen and water. In a serendipituous departure from geological reality, they locate surface deposits of ringwoodite—a high-pressure mineral typically found hundreds of kilometers deep in Earth’s mantle—and proceed to mine it by hand. This fortuitous find ensures that scientific accuracy remains secondary to the demands of shipboard drama. Watch
Precious Find (1996). Set in 2049, Moon City resembles a lawless outpost in the terrestrial Wild West. Three strangers join forces to find a legendary gold deposit—known as “the precious”—located on Asteroid 18. There’s an eager young prospector, a navigator with a spectral map that will lead them to the gold, and a freighter captain with a space hauler that will get them to it. Their plan is jeopardised by a cyborg Samurai “jumper” and his henchmen who arrive on the asteroid to claim the find, only to fall prey to indigenous subterranean predators reminiscent of the monsters in Tremors. Search for the sole copy on YouTube, or just stick to the trailer. Watch.
Screamers (1995): Berynium was supposed to solve Earth’s energy crisis, capable of powering a transit to Saturn in a day. Instead, it turned the mining colony on Sirius 6B into a radioactive wasteland. When the Alliance of miners and scientists tried to halt operations, the controlling Corporation declared war. By 2078, the war is defined by “screamers”—an army of subsurface, saw-nosed, robotic killiing machines originally designed by the Alliance to protect their bunkers. When a corporate soldier arrives delivering an armistice request—and a VR message is received from Earth that safe berynium has been found on Triton 4—two Alliance operatives trek across the wasteland to negotiate. But they find the corporate command centre is now a factory run by screamers, producing screamers. The machines are building bio-mechanical clones. Self-aware and indistinguishable from humans, the new iteration of screamers are already infiltrating the bunkers. As a lone survivor tries to flee the planet, the realisation of how screamers have evolved hits home. As the film’s tagline states, “the last scream you hear will be your own”—only now you’re screaming, “Bear!” Watch
Alien (1979). In 2122, the commercial tug Nostromo is hauling a massive interstellar refinery—20 million tons of mineral ore—back to Earth. The crew is brought out of cryo-sleep by the ship’s computer a few months earlier than planned to respond to a supposed distress call from a derelict ship on a nearby moon. Diverted from their return journey, they discover that their corporate employers have designated them as expendable in order to get their hands on a new bio-weapon: a predatory, bio-silicotic, xenomorphic alien with battery acid for blood. In space, no one can hear you scream, and there’s certainly nowhere to hide within the ship either. While we never get to see any mining activity, the Nostromo certainly feels like it’s hauling dirt—it’s a sprawling, steam-filled labyrinth of pipes and valves that feels more like a boiler-room than a spaceship. In the future of space-based industry, perhaps the cargo will always be more valuable than the workers. Watch
Moon Crash (2022). An ambitious lunar mining operation, run by a global steel conglomerate, triggers a massive structural failure that shears a Manhattan-sized fragment off the Moon. As hundreds of shards pummel Earth’s major cities, the survivors on the Moon are forced to repurpose the remaining mining infrastructure to prevent a planetary-scale catastrophe on Earth. The plot hinges on a desperate technical pivot: radically re-engineering the facility’s high-output drilling equipment to fire a massive electromagnetic pulse at the incoming rock. This is a movie about industrial redemption, where the same heavy machinery responsible for the disaster is the only tool available to resolve it. Watch
Red Dwarf (1988–2020). Set three million years in the future, this long-running cult sitcom (TV series and movie) takes place aboard a Jupiter Mining Corporation (JMC) ore grade-one mining ship. While the plot has nothing to do with the vessel’s long-abandoned mining pursuits, it is included for completeness as a study of post-industrial drift. Following a catastrophic radiation leak that killed the crew, the only survivors are a low-level technician, a hologram of his supervisor, a lifeform that evolved from the ship’s cat, a service mechanoid and a senile computer. Although the ship’s massive interior remains largely abandoned, the titular space barge is a monolithic reminder of the corporate scale of its past mining activity. Watch
Within the Rock (1996). In the then-future of 2019, what looks like a rogue moon—Galileo’s Child—is on a collision course with Earth. The crew of a floating mining platform is diverted to drill a network of tunnels on the rock intended to act as exhaust ports for a trajectory-altering explosion. While skimming off some incidental platinum deposits, they breach a near-impenetrable chamber literally lined with the metal. But the vault is a prehistoric prison for a humanoid predator, jettisoned into space eons ago by a civilisation it once preyed upon. Millions of years of collisions and the vault is now embedded in space rock. A binary warning against ever entering the chamber—etched into one of the platinum panels—is translated too late; the breach alters the atmosphere, resurrecting the alien. As they are picked off one-by-one, the miners must repurpose their drilling equipment to combat the predator while completing the mission to redirect the rock. Watch
Total Recall (1990). In the year 2084, the Martian economy revolves entirely around the mining of turbinium ore, for a use that is never explained. A terrestrial construction worker, haunted by dreams of Mars, discovers his life is fake and travels to the red planet to resolve his identity. He comes up against a corporate stranglehold where the Governor maintains control of the colony by controlling the oxygen. If you want to breathe you have to buy his air. And there’s a kill-switch on the supply to suppress any uprising by the largely mutant workforce. But the planet’s true resource isn’t the turbinium, because buried within one of the mines is an aborted atmosphere generator—built by aliens, made of turbinium—capable of flash-melting the apparently icy Martian core to create a breathable atmosphere. If Mars has an atmosphere, the Governor has no control. Watch
A Day on the Asteroid (2009). Set in the year 3032, this absurdist, low-budget indie follows a Groucho Marx-inspired Chief Inspector dispatched to the mining colony Palermus IV. His mission is to investigate localised space-time disturbances and wormhole fluctuations, while the local Commissar prepares for a famous visitor from the past. The film delivers a low-fi industrial aesthetic to represent its futuristic setting. A standout moment occurs at the 4:20 mark: a catchy, Neil Young-esque musical interlude delivered by the Inspector that hints at the deep-seated instability of the site: “There’s something going on, on this asteroid.” As an industrial prospect, Palermus IV might be classified as a P-type asteroid—although any traditional mining efforts would only yield Plasticine. Watch
Mr Benn: The Spaceman (1971). One of the original adventures of Mr Benn, the bowler-hatted British gentleman who resides at number 52 Festive Road, Putney. Mr Benn is known for frequenting a nearby fancy-dress shop to go on an adventure, the place and time of which is determined by the costume he picks. As if by magic, the shopkeeper appears. Selecting a bright green spacesuit, Mr Benn goes to the changing room and leaves by the customary exit—the door into adventures. After a spot of rock-hopping to find the perfect planet and bagging hoards of precious stones along the way, Mr Benn realises two things: all that glistens isn’t gold—and there’s no place like home. Watch
Ghost of Mars (2001). It’s 2176 and on Mars a police squad arrives at a remote mining colony, only to find the industrial outpost has been reduced to a blood-soaked wasteland. The mining operations accidentally breached an ancient underground vault, releasing Martian spirits that possess the human workforce and turn them into a self-mutilating army intent on exterminating all human settlers. To survive, the police and a high-profile prisoner resort to a forced alliance against the possessed miners. Their attempt to vaporise the threat by overloading the colony’s nuclear reactor fails, and they return to the Martian capital only to find it’s now a losing battle and a full-scale planetary infestation is underway. Watch
Salvage (1979). Okay, so this one doesn’t belong in this list at all, and while technically a reclamation mission, the film earns its spot by treating lunar debris as a literal gold mine—and it’s entertaining. Apollo 16 left behind the ultimate salvage haul—which a professional junkman recognises as an untapped fortune. He builds a heavy-duty rocket from scrap, a DIY mission control from a piggy-backed computer, and enlists some sidelined NASA talent: a pilot now a used car salesman and a propellant engineer now a movie pyrotechnics expert. The mission relies on the “Translinear Vector Principle”—a fictional theory of constant acceleration—and a designer monohydrazine fuel required for the system to work. Returning the salvage to Earth in a drained fuel tank, the junkman returns the entire haul to NASA—except for a Moon rock. It proves that with enough scrap metal and a few sidelined experts, a man with a crane can run a space program from a scrap heap. Watch
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