Originally published at: US government studying how to launch a commercial economy on the moon within ten years | Boing Boing
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What’s the short version? Is there anything on the moon that we want which can’t be found more easily on Earth? They still hoping to find abundant Helium-3 for cheap fusion energy, maybe?
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Enshittification, IN SPACE!
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Best I can tell, sending products back to Earth is beyond the scope of this.
This seems to be what can be done to get to the point where say, one of the Lunatics living on the moon can order some solar panels/propellant/whatever or what they need to make them from industry here or there rather than everything be centrally managed from the top-down by someone like NASA.
At least that’s my take. Honestly it’s all so vague and full of buzzwords it hurt to read. The Lunar Market Assessment does speak about eventually sending back products, but well beyond a 10 year horizon.
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CAPITALISM!!!… in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace! (That is, of course, ALL-CAPS CAPITALISM!!!)
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“Here me out. We’ll send a cow, see, into a translunar orbit. We’ll bring Bessie home safe and sound and sell the milk to Peter Thiel and that guy with no shirt on YouTube. Stuff may not make them live forever, but who knows. That’s Science, or magic or some shit. Damn, this coke is good.”
Turns out you can snort Moondust. You can snort anything. Once.
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Never book a stay at any establishment managed by Kevin Spacey.
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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that was my take too. although i don’t know which seems more likely: being a self sufficient closed economy, or one that exchanges something of value with earth for new inputs. ( especially given we haven’t even reached the point of: a base exists with heavy funding and no returns )
i guess the plan is some sort of moonshot. 
eta:
just wait till you see her dark side.
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Cool. Just like in the movie
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Turns out you can sell NFTs to Earthlings for 10s of thousands of dollars. Should be enough to thrive on the moon! /s
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Fully Automated Zero-Luxury Space Capitalism? Boo! Boo, we say!
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Abstracts for project proposals need to be in by September 6, with the program officially kicking off in November, so get cracking.
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Because ruining one planet simply isn’t enough
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I think only the aliens that live on the moon consider the moon a planet.
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It better be small useful items, or stuff for use in space, because dropping a Great Lakes ore freighter-load from LEO releases half a megaton of energy.
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So you’re saying that there’s an opportunity to get paid to not send products back?
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“Nice load of ore I’ve got here. Shame if I … dropped it.”
(The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, only with Musk and Thiel as main characters.)
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