[XorNot]

Isn't this pretty much the point of such an endeavor though, or at least part of one?

There's a lot of science we'd like to do on the moon, chief of which would be to actually test the space-settlement self-sufficiency problems in an environment like that.

With the ISS as comparison, it's not going to be "bam 100 people" it's pretty obviously going to be a process of rotating in progressively larger crews while the systems and bottlenecks are worked out. Not to mention we'll benefit a lot from the sort of focused sustainability research this will generate.