Still a couple challenges though: - some important elements (nitrogen for example) are mostly missing from the Moon, necessitating import (nicely illustrated i

Still a couple challenges though: - some important elements (nitrogen for example) are mostly missing from the Moon, necessitating import (nicely illustrated in the Artemis novel) - no atmosphere means any grain of interplanetary dust in collision course with the Moon impacts its surface (and possibly any astronauts on the surface) directly at high velocity - by not having atmosphere you can't use atmospheric reentry/aerocapture/aerobraking to shed velocity like you can with a body with an atmosphere; all speed changing maneuvers need a thruster impulse or similar - no atmosphere means serious temperature extremes; even the very thin atmosphere on Mars events the day/night temperatures quite a bit - you need retranslation from the far side of the Moon to Earth - only a few fine tuned orbits around the Moon are stable, all others will quickly crash any satellite orbiting on them to the lunar surface due to the uneven gravity field of the Moon caused by sub-surface mass concentrations ("mascons") All in all Moon has a lot of benefits, even just by being close to Earth. Still a couple things to watch for though. :)