37.9 million square kilometers

That's what Google tells me is the land area of the moon.

I said here that I would explain a potential profit that would allow us to start living on the moon. I only hinted at it there, so I'm going to expand upon it here.

I'm more a mars advocate than the moon because I believe the moon is too close to allow getting free of the political entanglements of earth and mars is a better place for independence in terms of resources. But let's discuss the moon.

First, no nation on earth can GRANT land on the moon. You can't grant what you do not own. When you hear people talk about land grants in space they are showing a profound misunderstanding of some basic facts (that includes some really smart people.) If nations do start granting land it's because they claimed it first. Not possible otherwise. The act of granting implies a claim.

People have claimed land long before any nations existed and that right continues to exist. Claims are going to be made. We can establish a precedent if done in an orderly manner using agreed upon terms.

So, would it be profitable? What is break even?

Would 1000 sq. km. cover the cost of transporting one lunar colonist?

Golden Spike is suggesting $700m to be the cost for one visitor. Let's just assume for now the infrastructure exists for them to stay and live there (yes, a big assumption) or we could just say a round billion per colonist (that much? I can't believe we can't get that down when Elon and Zubrin are both claiming going to mars, which is much harder, would only be $500,000 per colonist... and both are claiming that's there and back, not just one way.)

In any case, 1000 sq. km. would be about 494,000 half acre plots. Divide that into the one billion cost is about $2000. That's too much. To make the business case we'd have to bring that down at least 20 times to get within the $100 impulse buy range. So for the moon, we would either have to get the cost per colonist down to $50m each or increase the terms to 20,000 sq. km. per colonist transported or some combination of both. It seems doable. There is certainly enough land.

This money doesn't go to any government directly. It goes to the transportation company which pays it's normal taxes. The colonist travels for free so anybody could go.

I'm not going to address how the colonists pay for life on the moon in this post. But they will each have about 500 plots they could develop according to the terms of my proposed charter. The transportation company will be selling their plots mostly to speculators on earth. I would hope that would be lots of companies in competition over a long period of time.

Personally, I don't think it will play out this way because of too much interference with earth politics. I much prefer the distance of mars.