Foust Forward | Is there a business case for the moon?
Foust Forward | Is there a business case for the moon?
When the transition to more purely commercial activities on the moontakes place, and how that happens, remains uncertain.
TL;DR: no
There's no "killer app". It'll at most be Antarctica for the foreseeable future, with mainly research and maybe some tourism.
I'd love to see permanently crewed surface bases, far side telescopes, and plenty of support infrastructure. Any of the mining and refining concepts seem like a waste of time, though, especially with NASA's crew ambitions riding on the Spacex and Blue Origin landers that'll bring their own prop and have significant down mass capabilities.
I'd still love to see a space elevator tried. Its not really needed for it but its proximity and desolateness make it a good testing grounds along with the low gravity allowing it to be done with pretty basic materials.