Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
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.
The Moon is basically devoid of rocket fuel or its ingredients so it will need to be brought there. The question is, what kind of craft are you going to send and where to warrant Moon refueling as opposed to just another multi-stage rocket?
Even then, the tank can be designed for unmanned operation.
The moon has lots of water, and oxygen, which is all you need. Almost rocks on over the ice that’s your fuel. Sure you could get all that on earth but then you have to haul all of that weight out of a gravity well, much easier to simply fuel a ship up with the limited amount of fuel it needs to get to the moon and then have its stock up somewhere with less oppressive gravity.
Literally anywhere in the solar system. Refueling on the moon is an enormous efficiency bonus, far apart from anything else not having a huge booster section massively decreased costs. In the long term you would probably build spacecraft on the moon and leave them in orbit of Earth and just have space shuttles handle the landing and taking off part. You could build enormous spacecraft with gravitational centrifugees since you no longer have to worry about landing mass or aerodynamics.
Are you joking?
Edit. Educate yourself. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/moon-water-ice-rocket-fuel
Pro tip: Not making the person feel like an idiot goes a long way into making your information reach more places.
I searched for some terms and you get your usual articles of “greatest energy source found” mixed in with plenty of slop. Its hard to take any of those at face value nowadays when news outlets tend to exaggerate everything science related. Not even mentioning the article you posted has a pay or login wall.