The old "strip it of all resources and anything else of value" gambit will suffice for this and all others in the future.

Ask investors for more money

Next question

Realistically, building stuff. If you want to build large radiotelescooe or space observatory you can't launch it in one piece.

Other use case would be to run refueling and launch station, given there's a water ice on the moon, it makes possible to convert it into hydrogen + oxygen and refuel landing vehicles to launch them on a far missions

It is a really good "proving ground" for longer term human habitation of something like a settlement on a foreign body, without being so far away that some kind of rescue is basically impossible should something go wrong.

Also, going from Earth > Moon > Mars, or where ever, is probably less complex from a total at one time payload perspective than trying to move everything you would need for that longer term destination all at once.

Plus as you alluded to, you can't really put a price on the political good will that comes from doing something like that. The Moon is a cheaper way to get that good will and some experience from point one as a starting point.

have awesome space sex

The logical answer would be send robots. But, let's face it. They'll probably keep cloning and killing some poor bastard with fake implanted memory to do their bidding in a perpetual cycle.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

Realistically, the Moon would likely carry a mix of science, mining, and power installations.

Science - You can set up a large telescope on the far side of the Moon which won't have an atmosphere to compete with. There are some concepts which would use existing craters to keep the cost low.

Mining - It is possible for there to be rare earth minerals on the Moon. There is also Helium-3 in the regolith. A country may choose to have a colony on the Moon address terrestrial shortages.

Power - The Moon makes an excellent site to collect solar power. That power could possibly be beamed/reflected to Earth, used to refine high electrical demand materials, or be a site for compute.

As this gets built out, the Moon will likely become a manufacturing hub, especially for missions beyond the Earth-Moon gravity well due to lower launch costs.

Haven't read all the responses, but in case nobody's said it: the moon will never be easily terraformed into a stable environment, so the primary reason for moon habitation, aside from telescopes which require no fuel for orbital maintenance (and have no atmosphere with which to contend), is that the moon is a significantly easier place both to construct and launch rockets, so if we can get asteroid mining going, a moon base would allow significantly increased accessibility for rocketry for other missions.

For Mars, I figure it's twofold:

1. don't have all your eggs in one basket. If earth becomes uninhabitable for some reason, having a self-sustaining population on Mars could be the only hope for continuation of the human race.
2. direct study of Martian soils and other samples to determine if life has ever existed, or even currently exists, elsewhere in the solar system.

As someone pointed out, however, the current society is so focused on funneling wealth and power to only a few prime exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, that to attempt actual colonisation when they are the ones who'd control the colonies would be violently, unbelievably stupid and be even more likely to lead to total extinction of life on Earth

It's a good lauchpad to reach farther distances. It's much easier to launch through the moon's atmosphere than the Earth's, making it the best staging ground to go to Mars or the Asteroid belt, where there might be some valuable minerals or something.

Resources that are minimally available on Earth.

Example: The moon has Helium-3 and is close (in comparison to other celestial bodies).

Is it economically viable? Is it ethical? Ehhhhhhhh. I would say no, but Elon “Head Up His Own Ass” Musk would disagree.

we actually seem not at all concerned about doing anything with the moon, it’s either launching more satellites or going to mars.

We like the moon, because its close to us We like the moon, but not as much as a spoon!

Science doesn't really happen if we continually ask "Why do this?" Science happens when we ask "Why not do this?"

If we want to be a galactic civilization, we must first learn to live on worlds otherwise uninhabitable. The engineering challenges we must overcome to make that happen will give us the knowledge and experience we need to make it possible to expand past our solar system. This is a very long term advancent, and what we do today is what our offspring will do with ease.

Other than political roadblocks, the final roadblock to galactic expansion is FTL travel. We have theories on how to make it possible, but we are limited to the engineering and knowledge of our time now. Far future generations will be the ones to discover if and how to make it possible, but they need the foundational knowledge and experience of how to live in space.

It’s scientifically priceless. For instance, a permanent space telescope/excavation base on the dark side of the moon would be incredible.

…But realistically, post 2026, that should be handled by drones. Doubly so for expeditions to other celestial bodies.

The people pushing for human habitation in space aren’t really technical; they don’t have a good scientific background. But they think they are because they’ve seen some sci-fi, maybe they hold some high office, and their egos are the size of the moon.

They’re also surrounded by bubbles telling them they are right.

There was similar financial angst around the Apollo Program, FYI. The political question was “why didn’t that money go to social programs instead?”

I’m against that. I think the space race was scientifically priceless. But… TBH, I think funding winding down made sense, too.

But that should be distinct from the more recent flights of fancy. Let me be clear: humans (as we exist now) living in space makes zero sense, no matter how much we don’t want that to be the case. It certainly won’t fix any Earth problems.