I guess those are some short term reasons. Long term, having people living on the moon would actually be surprisingly useful. Things like the rocket equation

I guess those are some short term reasons. Long term, having people living on the moon would actually be surprisingly useful. Things like the rocket equation and delta v are not something that current day muggles are up to date on of course (like in 1800 people probably couldn't intuit train fares, or people in 1900 probably couldn't intuit air fares). If you do some "back of the envelope"[1] calculations , there are definitely scenarios/niches where it can become cheaper to manufacture things and ship them all the way to Earth from the low-gravity Moon, as opposed to making them directly on Earth and then be stuck dragging them around from point A to point B at the bottom of Earth's horrendously deep gravity well. Once some sufficient (fsvo sufficient) foothold is established, I think it might then become viable to expand it. [1] https://xkcd.com/1244/ https://xkcd.com/1244/ O:-)