Why? It's an airless rock that sits at the bottom of a gravity well that has maybe a smidge of water. I guess you can make yourself a nice radiation shelter there?
For now.
The key multiplier to changing space exploration is making that no longer true. And you could do a lot worse than solid ground, with gravity, near Earth as a first permanent step.
Using a lunar space elevator allows you to cheaply move materials from the moon into space and build huge interplanetary rockets without having to design your rocket around the rocket equation to get out of a gravity well.
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think a lunar space elevator port is the key to exploring the solar system. You can build massive spaceships and refuel them without ever having to deal with the tyranny of the rocket equation.
* Gravity: enough to help with long term habitation, but low enough that getting on and off is much, much easier than Earth.
* Close to Earth
* Enough space that one could build a lot of things. It's a lot cheaper to dig than it is to launch more space station modules.
I realize we can work on more than one problem at a time and that it is expedient to do so. But I often wonder how much space exploration, particularly manned missions, are a distraction from more pressing issues on our home planet.
Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed.
Enduring sources of clean water for everyone in the world is a scientifically very easy problem to solve compared to most of what is discussed on this website.
The problem is that it is a politically very difficult problem to solve. And you want Bezos/Musk/etc to fix this... how?
However, I would be encouraged to see the scientific community Incorporate a stronger social solidarity into their work. Because a problem is hard or simple is not reason enough alone to pursue it, personally. Finding the largest prime number known might be a somewhat difficult task, but to what end is it found?
* Close to Earth while maintaining a nearly constant distance.
* Always reachable. Never is it on the other side of the sun from Earth.
* Yes, but unless all resources and future astronauts are all from said moon base then they have to leave Earth anyway. Stopping at the moon would take even more energy.
* Close to Earth yes. But not really to anything else (the moon is relatively right next to earth compared to any other object really worth landing on).
* Build what? This is similar to point 1. To get any resources there we still have to send them from earth. It'd be relatively waaaaay cheaper to send more space station modules then to either send raw resources + specially designed building equipment, or moon base modules.
Don't get me wrong. I'd vote for it and pay my share in taxes to develop and build a self sustaining base on the moon. My reasoning is more of a engineers "because we can" mentality to a fun (IMO) challenge. We'd also benefit on Earth from the technology developed.
There are a number of very smart people who believe that the next big thing is industry in space with materials not from earth.
I'd say though, lets pretend that an entire "flight" to intercept an comet/asteroid/material-rich-spacebody (Sorry I don't know the technical terms here) could be reduced to 100million USD. That material would have to be worth that 100million USD, not to mention all of the R/D.
Again personally I want humans to one day achieve it just for the heck of it - why not? But others are money driven and I'm not sure it makes actual financial sense (in terms of money making)
Why not settle the Gobi Desert? Develop technologies to suck carbon out of the air, and reverse global warming? Develop technologies to cope with climate disruption, or even just purchase land for the anticipated climate refugees. All of these are really Hard problems, and billion times more pressing, and much more obvious impact.