There could also be facilities for experiments that can't be done on Earth, like things that can grow better on low gravity, there may be materials/gases that are rare on Earth and we could grab from asteroids so having space stations and bases around the solar system would be helpful.

BTW, this isn't a real thing

Yes, the dark side of the Moon is a real thing. It's the side that doesn't get Earth-lit nights.

I think the point the other poster was making is that "far side of the moon" is far more specific, accurate and useful term.

It's a “definition” in the sense that it is a description semantically equivalent to what the phrase “dark side of the moon” has always referred to; it is not, however, a description of the etymology of the term, which derives instead from the long established use of “dark” to mean mysterious, hidden from knowledge, obscure, occult, etc.

If nothing else, there is real estate. Might not be worth much, but there is a lot of it.

Helium 3 is certainly worth shipping even at a premium.

Making a helium-3 fusion reactor is a tougher problem than mining on the moon. And even then making helium-3 on earth is cheaper than going to the moon to mine it.

Mining the moon for Helium-3 would be something someone would do once a colony is established, not a reason to establish one.

Probably the most lucrative thing to mine on the moon is water.

So you first make something the rich people want. Like luxury residences in spaces, Elysium like. Like really really affluent neighborhoods for ultra rich. Tourism is another part. Make people go to space, stay for a few earth-days, have them see some spectacular astronomical phenomenon. Sky size theaters, Toy space shuttles like we have dashing cars, Disney land like attractions etc etc.

The other part of course is permanent science labs, where you do high quality research and development. Something like the Large Hadron Collider takes a lot of real estate and resources on earth to build. Eventually that kind of work can be done in space. That will make a lot of smart people want to work in space.

Of course since resources are plenty in space, and energy is just pointing you array of panels at sun. I'm guessing due to the economics of it, a lot of other people might want to stay and work there. Like electricity strapped countries, might want to manufacture in space.

The use cases are endless that way.

Eventually you extend it to everybody else.

Also it might be worth it for gold.

The moon is just a few days away.

The costs are not a given. With new better tech, then can come waay down.

Also note that the freight ships need not be manned.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/moonshin...

> Firstly, nobody's built a commercially successful fusion reactor yet. ITER plan to build a working test-bed; it's logical successor would be a working prototype first generation power reactor. There are huge obstacles to overcome, not least in developing neutron capture techniques and breeding D/T fuel. These are engineering problems (sorry, annoying paywall) and theoretically amenable to solution — but at a price of billions of euros and decades of work, and even then, it may turn out to be too costly to be a viable competitor for well-understood fourth generation fission technology and a mature waste disposal/fuel recycling chain. And that's before we look to a speculative second generation reactor, running on a different type of fuel, that — because of the higher Coulomb barrier between He nuclei — requires a far higher temperature (on the order of 500M to 1Bn degrees celsius, rather than the relatively chilly 100M degrees C required for D/T fusion).

> Given the average generation time for a new reactor technology of 20-30 years, and development costs on the order of $50Bn-100Bn per generation, we won't be even thinking about prototyping an He3 reactor until 2060 at the earliest.

I'm not sure it would be viable to return gold from the moon even if the moon was made of solid gold.

Water as a space resource is primarily talked about for use in space.

I'm not sure it would be viable to return gold from the moon even if the moon was made of solid gold.

It turns out it's a lot cheaper to return stuff from the moon, than it costs to send it to the moon. This is especially true if the stuff is dead, and you don't mind subjecting it to 10's of thousands of g's and you can use electromagnetic accelerators running in free vacuum on the surface, instead of rockets.

Refined aluminum was once scarcer than gold, and aluminum jewelry was extraordinarily expensive.