We don’t know what’s there.

If these tubes exist, we don’t know what their properties are, or what it will take to exploit them.

These alleged lunar resources have never been proven to exist, and even if they do exist, they have not been located or mapped.

Even if these resources and structures exist exactly as you’ve outlined them here, it will still take an enormous effort just to survey the area and set up the infrastructure to develop them.

Read about the Panama Canal. Before the first shovelful of dirt was moved we had to drain the swamps and kill the mosquitoes so we could build the towns where the workers would live who would unload the ships that were bringing in the steam shovels. And so on. And so on. Digging the ditch was chicken shit compared to all the prep we had to do first.

Remember Arthur C Clarke’s “The Deep Range”? We were going to mine the ocean floor and live in domed cities on the abyssal plains, farming fish and plankton and algae to feed the world. That’s not impossible either, but it still didn’t happen, and its a lot closer than the moon.

Remember how orbital satellites were going to pay for themselves with all the zero-g manufacturing we would be able to do? The perfectly spherical ball bearings? That never happened either.

Just because something is not impossible doesn’t mean it is inevitable. And it certainly doesn’t mean it will be profitable. Think, fission power, the supersonic transport, flying cars…its all space groupie wet dreams. We abandoned those things; not because they were impossible, but because they weren’t profitable.

Some things are just too complicated, or too expensive, or too dangerous. And some things will turn out to be unnecessary because we’ll find easier, cheaper and safer ways of doing them, ways we can’t even imagine right now.

We do seek profit from the stars, true – but profit’s not why we travel.

*EDIT* Here’s some linked pictures of Lunar Lava Tubes. Tell me we can’t Agartha that shit:

We cannot let our limited knowledge of these formations be used as a justification for
an extremely expensive program that may not go anywhere.

Remember all those golden cities and friendly natives ready to be converted to
Christ that were used to justify the conquest of the New World?

And there are lava tubes in Hawaii, too, but no one’s putting condos in them.

I just think this obsession with going back to the moon is going to suck all our space program dry, like the Shuttle did. As for the moon being a reservoir of resources, I’ll believe it when it is demonstrated to me with hard numbers.

The only thing I know for sure that the moon has plenty of is gravity. Every kilogram of reaction mass needed to brake for landing on the moon, as well as every kilogram needed to claw back out of its gravity well, is going to have to be first lifted up out of earth’s well. And that’s just propellant. We still haven’t even looked at the cost of payload.

And that’s not even counting the energy expense of building, supplying, operating and maintaining a lunar base as well as any lunar orbital stations needed to support it.

As for all this talk about using the lunar lava tubes that MIGHT exist in order to learn how to use the Martian lava tubes that MIGHT exist…well, I don’t buy it and I certainly don’t want to pay for it, with either delta-v or delta-dollars.

One of the things that should be an area of great study on the moon when we go back are the giant lava tube caves likely 100s of meters across and many kilometers long- there are many of them. They would provide a possible shelter for future human habitats – protection from micrometeorites and radiation.

Mars also has similar lava tubes, that would provide the same benefits lessons learned on the moon could greatly accelerate exploration of Mars.

There are countless other good science (and some engineering) reasons to do the moon first- but the events of the past few weeks are catching up to me… and I need a nap…