Show HN: I made a curated Moon page for anyone to learn why we explore the Moon

I always thought the main issue with a moon base is that the cost of rocket launches and fuel will be << the cost of maintaining a moon base, especially when the only way to get stuff on the moon is to fly it there, too.

What would really change things is if we found a way to make rocket fuel and rocket parts using resources extracted from the moon. Which is also quite expensive since you need to bootstrap the operation.

Also after reading recent accounts of how much damage lunar regolith did to all the Apollo equipment, I wonder what it would be like to have to have heavy industrial drilling equipment withstand the same kinds of conditions.

I'd imagine the closest analog you could find on Earth is trying to do stuff in obsidian that's been through a blender?

I'm super interested in space exploration and do wish there was a "one weird trick" solution to making it less hard, but man, without organic life to coat your planet in nice safe carbon gloop that conveniently turns into easily accessible combustable hydrocarbons if you leave it for a little while, it seems hard to build and maintain facilities in anything but earth and orbit.