Okay, something that I’ve been curious about recently: can any sort of rocket fuel be extracted from the moon? Think how much easier a, say, Mars mission would be if we only had to pull the majority of the fuel out of the moon’s gravity well instead of our own. What else can we extract from the moon right now, with existing tech? Water, food, O2?
Further, what motivation could we give people for moving there on a permanant basis? Religious freedom is a given, at least in most countries capable of moving people to the moon. Economic opportunity and conquest are out, unless we wanted to move homeless, jobless people. Penal colony, perhaps?
Well, recent discoveries of ice deposits on the surface could be used as fuel. With a power source you could melt the ice and through electrolysis separate the oxygen and hydrogen from the water.
Oxygen is ubiquitous in the solar system, mostly in the form of metal oxides. If you have the energy you can extract it from moon rock or mars soil. Hydrogen is a bit harder to find on small moons asteroids. bit if you use a hydrogen/oxygen rocket the oxygen weighs a lot more than the hydrogen, so it may not be as big a problem.
However, mining the Moon for oxygen The hardware required to land on the moon, extract oxygen and launch it into space is substantial. It may make sense if you start sending monthly supply ships to a Mars colony, but until then, it’s a lot simpler to launch everything from earth. On the other hand, it may make sense to generate oxygen on Mars for the return trip.
If you want to set up a plant on the moon to extract oxygen from the silicate rock and dust there, what chemical process would you use? You need to essentially reduce silica to oxygen and silicon using a closed-cycle system.