- Moon Express, a start-up that plans to mine the lunar surface for rare and precious metals

- signed a deal with Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab for three robotic lunar craft launches starting in 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAMPD65dvIY

- moon's mineral riches: gold, cobalt, iron, palladium, platinum, tungsten and Helium-3

- Moon Express has won more than $500,000 under NASA's Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data Program

- they have also won $1.25 million as a part of Google's Lunar XPRIZE competition which will award $30 million to the first company that lands a commercial spacecraft on the moon

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/01/moon-express-rockets-closer-to-planned-lunar-landing.html

Do you remember film Time Machine?

From Rocket Lab website

http://www.rocketlabusa.com

Electron is a two stage vehicle that uses Rocket Lab’s Rutherford liquid engine on both stages.

The first Electron launch is planned for 2015, with commercial operations scheduled to begin in 2016. At a cost of $4.9M Electron is the most affordable dedicated launch service for small satellites to Low Earth Orbit.

If the first launch is planned for 2015 (we're already in October, shouldn't they have done that already?), I doubt they'll be able start their operations in 2016, at least if they want them to succeed.

And the rockets are made to launch 150Kg satellites to low Orbit, which is far, far away from the Moon.

The end game for them is to look for rare materials on the lunar surface:

MoonEx aims to scour moon for rare materials

The Silicon Valley start-up is building machines with NASA scientists that are designed to search the lunar surface for precious metals and scarce metallic elements.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/08/business/la-fi-moon-venture-20110408

Correct me if I'm wrong but, if we start mining the moon... won't that mess up the whole gravitational ballet between us and then moon?

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4805/effects-of-space-mining-on-earths-orbit

Heh, smart people are great. 

Intelligence is not measruable by gauging someone's amassed knowledge. Anyone with an average IQ can learn something. The word you're looking for isn't smart but rather educated.

There's a huge difference between intelligent minds and educated ones.

...I'm quite impressed that a sentence like that prompted you to launch into a brief semantics-centered lecture lol

You mean to say the intelligent don't immediately inherit an education, and that the uneducated can still be intelligent? Thank heavens you were here to clarify that! :p

lol..

No, I'm saying that intelligence has nothing to do with how educated someone is. You can have someone with an IQ over 180 who doesn't know the capital of the US, but have someone with an IQ of 105, who knows every capital of every country in the world. 

Intelligence has more to do with human computing power. Not how much info is stored on the HDD.

Too bad any kilogram of ore brought from the moon probably costs on the high millions. Hell, it isn't profitable to mine from the deep sea, or even to extract certain precious metals from the northern permafrost. But props to them for being slightly more believable than Mars One, and earning a Google Prize too, specially after being founded by three entrepreneurs known for working on those kickstarted high investment, zero return  companies. I didn't even laugh - like JEMC said, they even have a chance of launching a small satellite into low orbit in a few years.