One economic case for the moon is as a source of mass in Earth orbit for staging exploration/utilisation of the rest of space. Low gravity and no atmosphere mak

One economic case for the moon is as a source of mass in Earth orbit for staging exploration/utilisation of the rest of space. Low gravity and no atmosphere makes it more attractive for raw materials than Earth is. Large Andy Weir style human settlement isn't required; this is a case for automated moon-based facilities for harvesting raw materials, performing whatever automated processing/fabbing is required, then launching them to where they're actually needed for considerably less than the current $25k/kg cost of getting them out of Earth's gravity well. Ultimately the only thing that absolutely needs to come all the way up out of Earth's gravity is canned homo sapiens; automated production of everything else can be arranged remotely.