No Stupid Questions

The old "strip it of all resources and anything else of value" gambit will suffice for this and all others in the future.

Ask investors for more money

Next question

Realistically, building stuff. If you want to build large radiotelescooe or space observatory you can't launch it in one piece.

Other use case would be to run refueling and launch station, given there's a water ice on the moon, it makes possible to convert it into hydrogen + oxygen and refuel landing vehicles to launch them on a far missions

In the case of musk and his billionaire friends, they just want to escape the consequences of their actions and become above the law. Basically they want to be a king, with no laws restraining them.

Realistically, the Moon would likely carry a mix of science, mining, and power installations.

Science - You can set up a large telescope on the far side of the Moon which won't have an atmosphere to compete with. There are some concepts which would use existing craters to keep the cost low.

Mining - It is possible for there to be rare earth minerals on the Moon. There is also Helium-3 in the regolith. A country may choose to have a colony on the Moon address terrestrial shortages.

Power - The Moon makes an excellent site to collect solar power. That power could possibly be beamed/reflected to Earth, used to refine high electrical demand materials, or be a site for compute.

As this gets built out, the Moon will likely become a manufacturing hub, especially for missions beyond the Earth-Moon gravity well due to lower launch costs.

It is a really good "proving ground" for longer term human habitation of something like a settlement on a foreign body, without being so far away that some kind of rescue is basically impossible should something go wrong.

Also, going from Earth > Moon > Mars, or where ever, is probably less complex from a total at one time payload perspective than trying to move everything you would need for that longer term destination all at once.

Plus as you alluded to, you can't really put a price on the political good will that comes from doing something like that. The Moon is a cheaper way to get that good will and some experience from point one as a starting point.

The moon is a great starting point to explore the rest of the solar system, doubly so if we found water on it.

I’ll quote JFK (probably more Ted Sorensen) on this one « we don’t do this things because they are easy but because they are hard […] »

Resources that are minimally available on Earth.

Example: The moon has Helium-3 and is close (in comparison to other celestial bodies).

Is it economically viable? Is it ethical? Ehhhhhhhh. I would say no, but Elon “Head Up His Own Ass” Musk would disagree.

Science doesn't really happen if we continually ask "Why do this?" Science happens when we ask "Why not do this?"

If we want to be a galactic civilization, we must first learn to live on worlds otherwise uninhabitable. The engineering challenges we must overcome to make that happen will give us the knowledge and experience we need to make it possible to expand past our solar system. This is a very long term advancent, and what we do today is what our offspring will do with ease.

Other than political roadblocks, the final roadblock to galactic expansion is FTL travel. We have theories on how to make it possible, but we are limited to the engineering and knowledge of our time now. Far future generations will be the ones to discover if and how to make it possible, but they need the foundational knowledge and experience of how to live in space.

have awesome space sex

NASA spending has historically created more in return than is spent. It's somewhat expensive (essentially a rounding error next to military spending though), but the science done gives a good return on investment. This isn't just like on moon rocks or whatever, but developing technology that the missions need. Things like thermally reflective lightweight fabric, or a ton of other things. The science done on the Moon is worth a lot on its own, but it's also not the only thing we're getting out of it.

However, what are billionaires getting out of it? Hopefully it's just the opportunity to profit from the contracts and not something more nefarious. We all know it is though eventually.

Epstein planet

The logical answer would be send robots. But, let's face it. They'll probably keep cloning and killing some poor bastard with fake implanted memory to do their bidding in a perpetual cycle.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

There are resources on the moon. Like helium which the sources on Earth are slowly depleting because helium that gets released in to the air is basically gone, it floats up to the upper layers of the atmosphere and some atoms will eventually get knocked into space and leave Earth’s gravity. Also some scientific experiments require low gravity. Currently they are doing them on the ISS or in a reduced-gravity aircraft. In a moon base you can do a lot more science with more people.

Also some people that are researching lab grown organs think that in order to grow an entire organ that it has to be done in low gravity. So imagine in the future we could have a moon base that grows organs for thousands of people at a time.

Google: Tescreal, Freedom Citys, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc. Basically there are several projects where they try to do unregulated research. Main idea seems to be to "survive" the end of our civilisation by living in Space or in the deep sea, enhance themselves (eg neuralink) , create General Artificial intelligence etc. Thiels Palantir is thought as defense mechanism by surveilling everyone. It all sounds like a big conspiracy theory, unfortunately it is not. Musk being responsible for Dodge, deregulating the US Governement was exactly one of these things. It was never about saving money. This is all a big rabit hole and you will get in a very bad mood readinfg about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

Long term, the reason to expand into space is to expand into space. The point of going to Mars is not to make money. The point is to find a way for people to live there.

Let go of your sci fi visions of the future. Space colonization does not look like humans getting on a rocket ship on Earth's surface, blasting off between stars, and landing on a second Eden around another star, a world where you can take your helmet off, breathe the local air, eat the food, and drink the water. What we've learned from our exoplanet studies is that the cosmos has exercised infinite creativity in generating new Hells, worlds uninhabitable and lethal to us in ways we never even dreamed of.

Real space colonization is going to take a whole lot of engineering and building. Mars is actually quite habitable compared to the vast majority of worlds in the universe. If you have some basic self-replicating machines, making Mars habitable is quite doable. Cover as much of the surface as you want in vast greenhouses. Live under domes potentially spanning the entire world. Long term, Mars has great potential for human settlement.

As for why? Well I would say it's a moral responsibility. We know if we stay on just one planet, just one star, then it's only a matter of time before some natural or artificial disaster wipes us out, and possibly the rest of life along with it. Earth has the type of biosphere you probably have to scour multiples galaxies to find one of comparable complexity. That's a jewel worth protecting.

We tend to be too hard on ourselves as as species, viewing ourselves as some sort of cancer on the world. At the same time, we are the only hope for life on this planet to survive past a certain point. We are the children of Gaia. It's our duty and moral obligation to spread life as far and wide as possible. Life itself has intrinsic value. And it's our job to spread it.

Staging area for interplanetary exploration. It takes a lot of energy to leave the earth, making the rest of the journey to Mars or Jupiter quite difficult. It doesn't take nearly as much energy to launch from the moon though.

Right now we're all kinda eggs in one basket. Earth is one good cataclysm from wiping out humanity.

But we're not just going to sort out spreading to other planets without baby steps.

The ISS was the first step. We need a large enough permanent base to see whether agriculture and 100% recycling can work. They still need supplies from earth for now, but long term, can we make it work? how big does a settlement need to be?

cheaper access to space:

The moon is an interesting prospect. It's significantly further up the gravity well. We might be able to launch small probes via a rail gun, then use ion engines. No atmosphere to fight.

Radio Astronomy:

Anything not aimed at earth could be super sensitive.

Fuel:

we might be able to farm oxygen and hydrogen from water/minerals. and make a depo.

So I can't speak to the actual motivation for the moon, but can for one reason for at-least-temporary human habitation there. Solar system exploration (and, inevitably resource extraction.

When you launch rockets from Earth, a vast majority of the fuel you start with is burnt off just getting to orbit, out of the deepest part of our gravity well. If you want to go anywhere else in our solar system, you're severely limited to what's left. The moon's gravity is low enough that it could work as a refuelling station. Provided we find enough water there and set up solar hydrolysis stations there and build the infrastructure to get it up to orbiting ships. All that will take people to set up, and possibly to manage long term.

the colonies have a right to exist without OZ interference.

UESA has no governance over the colonies and must respect their sovereign will for independence.

-1. The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3. Earth has almost none and is quickly running out. This is due to the fact that much of those reserves come from the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field deflects that. https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Preparing_for_the_Future/Space_for_Earth/Energy/Helium-3_mining_on_the_lunar_surface

-2. It's fairly easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface, and comparatively easy to launch things to the Moon vs. Directly from Earth to Deep space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWhqNmJiufc

-3a. The moon blocks much of the radio chatter from Earth (on it's far side) meaning radio telemetry and astronomy have a MUCH easier time doing research

-b. By using such methods in concert with Terrestrial installations/telescopes, it makes for a FINE "natural" interferometer for literal logarithmic fractions of the price over Conventional Lagrange point based systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer

-4. The moon is ideal for biological "life boating" (google the "Svalbard Seed Bank" to get what I'm talking about)

-5. Earth's gravity can sometimes skew the results of VERY sensitive nuclear particle experiments. A particle collider on the moon might lead to exciting discoveries in quantum physics. Also such colliders require lots of liquid helium for cooling. (see point 1) The moon gets INCREDIBLY cold on it's night side, which saves on energy costs to boot, and night on the moon lasts for 2 weeks.

-6. The Lunar crusts' composition is almost identical to Earth's which means it probably has huge reserves of lithium, gold, platinum, titanium, and palladium. The fact that it gets seeded by meteorites frequently also increases these odds.

(edit) Added some sources

Mars talk is a red herring to attract bright young employees. Once they're hired, they work on drenching the sky with low orbit Earth satellites. That's what Starship is really for. The same with kids wanting to be peaceful astronauts ending up as fighter pilots killing people for oil.

The moon could be like an orbital gas station which is much easier to land and launch from compared to Earth (no atmosphere, less gravity). Building a buffer on the moon would make it considerably easier to ship mass to other planets. I don't really see a way we build a Mars base without having succeeded on the Moon first.

I'd separate this into two different things - what is good for humanity and what is good for billionaires like Musk.

For humanity, venturing out into the solar system will advance science, and also help drive technological advancement which does have benefits for society as a whole. The space race in the 20th century did advance technology, and much of the modern technology we take for granted has routes in the space race.

But also humanity needs to move away from our current capitalistic system and that is very much driven by scarcity. The resource wealth in the solar system is mind bogglingly vast and if we can tap into even a portion of it, it could allow us to change how we as a species live. It would initially be driven by capitalism for sure, but when you have effectively infinite resources for a civilization, that changes everything we do.

Also for the long term survival of our species we need to be looking outwards. Earth is vulnerable - one asteroid strike and out species could be wiped out. Even if only a small number of people were to head out into the stars, it would help guarantee a long term future and resilience for our species.

I think one big mistake people make is that what happens on earth is a zero-sum game: i.e. for some to win, it must be at the cost of others. That is wrong and is a result of our terribly broken economic system. But we can both colonize the moon and mars AND fix the problems on Earth. And it may do good for our species to look up to the stars and have a bigger shared goal than just existing on this rock and acquiring wealth.

In terms of why the moon & mars. The moon is essential as a staging post for future expansion, as it's very expensive resource and energy wise to launch from Earths gravity well, but much cheaper to build at the moon and launce from there without the added step & complexity in design for launching off Earths surface. Mars meanwhile is the most viable candidate at present for a self sustaining colony long term (with a couple of moons of Jupiter and Saturn other options, and possibly venus as a long stretch).

Meanwhile, Musk is a deranged billionaire idiot. He is nothing more than a investor gambler; other people are doing the hard work making things happen while he is a public face of various companies. He really is peripheral to this, even if he does push the topic into the public consciousness. Don't conflate the idea of expanding into the solar system with that idiot. The idea precedes him and will run long beyond his life and any influence he has. He is just a narcissistic loud mouth with money.

It's a good lauchpad to reach farther distances. It's much easier to launch through the moon's atmosphere than the Earth's, making it the best staging ground to go to Mars or the Asteroid belt, where there might be some valuable minerals or something.

Haven't read all the responses, but in case nobody's said it: the moon will never be easily terraformed into a stable environment, so the primary reason for moon habitation, aside from telescopes which require no fuel for orbital maintenance (and have no atmosphere with which to contend), is that the moon is a significantly easier place both to construct and launch rockets, so if we can get asteroid mining going, a moon base would allow significantly increased accessibility for rocketry for other missions.

For Mars, I figure it's twofold:

1. don't have all your eggs in one basket. If earth becomes uninhabitable for some reason, having a self-sustaining population on Mars could be the only hope for continuation of the human race.
2. direct study of Martian soils and other samples to determine if life has ever existed, or even currently exists, elsewhere in the solar system.

As someone pointed out, however, the current society is so focused on funneling wealth and power to only a few prime exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, that to attempt actual colonisation when they are the ones who'd control the colonies would be violently, unbelievably stupid and be even more likely to lead to total extinction of life on Earth

Rocket fuel. The moon is like the local gas station you stop at to top off the tank and get snacks before you hit the open road.

we actually seem not at all concerned about doing anything with the moon, it’s either launching more satellites or going to mars.

The rest of creation: we have a perfect blue marble to live on in a void of deadly nothing. Humams: challenge accepted!