Thoughts on a lunar base

George has some great ideas here.

A two stage lunar lander with living space in the descent module means with each landing you have more space (even if only for emergency use) for future astronauts. Plus his configuration of engines and ports has lots of merit.

However, a SSTO Red Dragon lander (or the Dragon 2 which I believe will be larger than the current Dragon capsule) will be much cheaper to operate since you do not leave anything behind and only have to refuel it.

Bigelow intends to drop his inflatable to the surface of the moon but I haven't seen any clear concept for that. They're overkill. Regolith provides the radiation shielding anyway, so you can use a much lower mass fully inflatable (Bigelow modules have a hard metal core.) What they need is a ditch digger and skip loader (likely a single rover with bucket on one end and digger on the other) which would probably be attached to the outside of the lander (like the Apollo lunar rovers were.) This rover would be used to dig a trench for an inflated habitat to be covered with regolith. The rover would be operated from inside the lander and later from inside the first habitat.

Assuming no nukes, power is a problem in a two weeks on, two weeks off, solar environment. I would think the best solution would be a lander devoted to providing power with an integrated nuclear power plant.

Once there, development of whatever industrial capacity the moon is capable of supporting would seem to be the next step? Water may only be available in certain locations, although oxygen is available everywhere (and solar power would be enough to extract it during the ~360 hr. day.)

The thing is, the market will really only exist in quantity when people are going someplace besides the moon. Water and oxygen for life support is a very low quantity market. Oxygen for engines of human transports to other places will be the big market if it ever gets started.