Or diminishing returns in terms of supply loads?

Ryge problem is the necessary redundancy in the engineering as well

You have one bolt fail and a colony dies

I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

No testing on lunar gravity has been done so far, might be just as bad as 0G, might solve all health issues.

What do you want to return and why?

The ISS is doing well so far, use the same concept and manufacture spares on site

You can only carry so much in terms of supplies to the Colony

What essential supplies cannot be recycled or periodically resupplied?

@[ｓｏａｔ] the ISS staff have serious health problems on return to esrth

What if a supply rocket blows?

Yes, which is why we need data on lunar levels of gravity

What if a supply rocket to the iss blows? (as happened before)

The distance is much greater.

But you can harvest most minerals on site, maybe even oxygen

And you can prepare a backup

How do you have the energy to produce them?

Solar

Think of the size of an array you would need

It's much more efficient than on earth, as there is no atmosphere or clouds

It's not that but manufacturing requires lots of electricity

If the necessary components are available you just need a starting base and can expand from there, you don't even necessarily need a crew with more advanced autonomous ground vehicles and remote operators

But would the commercial viability be?

I disagree that it would work but we have to just come to that conclusion

So what would the purpose of investment be?

Staking a claim before anyone else does,
building better telescopes,
building the first base on a different celestial body,
Possibly supplying shipyards in lunar orbit (lower escape velocity than earth, therefore cheaper)

I have an interesting "future conspiracy theory" I'm going to share that I've been thinking about for many years now.

Obviously the united states landed on the moon. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. However, there is one problem. A question moon landing deniers ask that will only get louder as time goes on "Why did we stop going back?"

This question is going to keep being asked past the point that everyone involved with the Apollo missions is going to have died. Eventually, the moon landing deniers are going to win. They'll push their theory across generations, and as long as we never go back they will eventually win the argument. A single trickle of insanity wearing down a boulder of factual evidence.

But it gets worse.

At some point someone else is going to land on the moon. Most likely the Chinese. In the course of their missions there they may decide to pay a visit to one or more Apollo landing sites. And what do you know? They find nothing.

Looks like the Americans did fake that moon landing. Wow.

Also, totally coincidence everyone, but the Chinese government announced that it's not going to abide by the UN outer space treaty. Now, as it appears that we're the first to land on the moon we're claiming it as property of China.

Alright boys I'm back

Oh Noes!

I should be able to be active again

Nice

Nice

What happened anyway?

Even the most ardent feminist seems to want to submit to a man and to full tradwife in her fantasies. But she knows she's too ugly (mostly inside, but also outside) for it to happen. So she wants to ruin it for all other women.

women fundamentally are incapable of honesty with themselves and cannot ever admit what they really want

so they just pretend they know and this is why we think they are crazy