Chairboy: Neither was Las Vegas, Mojave, or any other desert town founded in the 1800s, but they existed because we needed outposts for our journeys to places that WERE suitable.
It's like saying "we could live in Las Wegas, we can swim in molten lead."
The same thing applies to the moon.
I did not say it would be expensive to recreate human-habitable conditions on the Moon. I said that would be impossible.
Sure, we can (relatively) easily reproduce air-pressure, lighting and temperature.
It could not look anywhere like the pictures you've posted (the first one is a space-habitat, not a Moon dome) because in the abcence of magnetic field and thick athmosphere to deflect/shield hard space radiation people would have to live underground or under the layers of led and steel. But yes, we could make the environment livable for humans for a few weeks or months.
But how about gravity? Do you know what a major effect reduced gravity has on human biology? How much it screws up the body chemistry, from intracellular to the calcification of the bones?
People would have to spend several hours a day in centrifuges to slow down the deterioration. Maybe certain genetic types will prove less suceptible to damage. If reproduction is possible in such conditions, the children raised on the Moon would never be able to walk on Earth or anywhere where Earth-normal gravity is maintained.
And they better not come to Earth - they will not be able to take a 3-4-6 G acceleration required to lift from Earth back into orbit, which for them would be 18-36 times their normal.
So you will have a separate branch of humanity. Sure, they will be tall, fat and have huge perky breasts but you would not be able to intermix with them.
Lifting stuff from the Moon will be easier but total operations may not be.
How do you return the ships back? How do you get stuff to moon in the first place? There is no athmosphere to slow down descent with wings or parachutes. Imagine the Space Shuttle having to land on it's main engine - how much fuel it would need? More than it took to lift it. Even if you only use one-way disposable launches from the moon, all the heavy stuff to build them there will have to be gently lowered there first. It will take so much fuel to lower a self-sustaining mining/heavy-industry colony to the Moon that the trip to the asteroid belt will be cheap by comparison.
The rotating space habitat like the one depicted in the first drawing, but not open to harmfull space radiation, or even simpler design, with earth-normal gravity is the only realistic option untill we can generate gravity artificially.
The resources and cheap energy are available in the asteroid belt.
miko
