[wolf550e]

The moon has no resources to enable living there. You will always have to bring in air, water and food. Also, no current idea for something profitable to do there (Helium-3 mining is very theoretical). Some people want a moon base before a mars base, but I think they're mostly thinking about how much closer it is, not about what they want it for.

[yellowapple]

There's actually plenty of oxygen on the Moon, trapped in various rocks.

Water and food are indeed trickier; the Moon does have some trace amounts of carbon (deposited by solar wind) and hydrogen (at the poles), but extracting enough of those elements to sustainably support living there is unlikely unless we make some major discoveries or figure out a more reasonable way to import such things (one idea is to capture hydrocarbon-rich asteroids and park them in lunar orbit, but that ain't exactly my idea of "reasonable").

As for profitability, the Moon happens to be rich in silicon; a far-fetched idea might be to build a whole bunch of lunar microchip factories. The Moon is also full of raw materials in general, and getting them into space (e.g. to build spacecraft or to import to Earth) is a lot easier than getting such material into space from Earth. This makes the Moon a potentially-valuable staging point for missions to Mars and elsewhere.

If there is indeed water (or some other hydrogen source) on the Moon in sufficiently-abundant quantities, lunar fuel depots would actually be feasible; there's been quite a bit of work in recent decades around using silanes (hydrosilicons) as a useful fuel, replacing the need for hydrocarbon-based fuels (or using hydrogen directly).

[vorg]

The Moon could certainly be lived on easily, but with a mere 1-second communications lag between Earth and Moon, using remotely-operated drones to completely build a self-sustaining habitation before sending even a single human there would make more sense.

[yellowapple]

Indeed it would. I recall some work being done on a giant 3D printer than that print buildings out of concrete; figuring out a way to do the same with lunar materials would be a huge step in the right direction.

[greedo]

Complete nonsense. The moon has water which can obviously be broken down into oxygen and rocket fuel. The idea that we know the extent of the moon's resources is naive.

[wolf550e]

I thought it was only in permanently shadowed craters? If it's accessible and is concentrated enough, then you're right.

[Baeocystin]

There is reason to believe the moon is wetter than we thought.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/high-temperature-rock...

You're correct in that large, (comparatively) easily mined water ice deposits are located in permanent shadow at the poles, but there is likely water available in most locations, if you dig down below the surface.