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The only reason to land on the moon would be if you could find fuel there.

Which you can't. So that's a no for the moon, but something from orbit could make sense.

Have a staging area and just accumulate tons of fuel from multiple launches.




> Which you can't

Of course you can.

> By atomic composition, the most abundant element found on the Moon is oxygen. It composes 60% of the Moon's crust by weight, followed by 16-17% silicon, 6-10% aluminum, 4-6% calcium, 3-6% magnesium, 2-5% iron, and 1-2% titanium.

You have oxygen. You have aluminum. You can now make a solid rocket. There's some magnesium there too if you want to use that instead.


> You have oxygen. You have aluminum.

Not exactly. You have aluminium oxide, which you could split into aluminium and oxygen using huge amounts of energy, like we do on earth.

Helium-3 could be interesting, though.


Energy isn't a problem when you can build nuclear power plants without worry.


You then have the problem of building the nuclear power plant, though...


It's kind of hilarious that the hardest thing to find in the inner solar system, off Earth (and, of course, the Sun), isn't precisely water but hydrogen.


And aluminium, magnesium and titanium are great for building spacecraft, if we can get the mining and manufacturing capability there.




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