Sure, but Gateway Nasa can build a lot faster than Moon base using now institutional knowledge from ISS modules for bootstrap. Nasa and its collaborators have b

Sure, but Gateway Nasa can build a lot faster than Moon base using now institutional knowledge from ISS modules for bootstrap. Nasa and its collaborators have built one ISS already. To date no one has built a moon base yet. Even in (harder) science fiction, a station like Gateway is almost always a first step towards building a first moon base, because orbiting in a bunch of cramped Apollo-style "command modules" is a bit silly if you can build a mini-hotel waystation with a shared orbit instead and in theory save on extra modules. The Apollo-style was considered wasteful in the long term at the time, too, it was just easier and faster in the short term. The predictions that Apollo would not lead to a continued presence on or even near the Moon were rather right on the nose. We did the short term version once already, I can't fault Nasa for trying to do the real long term route if we're going back. (Because yeah, let's go back for good, this time.)