I'd also argue that doing these types of missions opens up new avenues for better technology to get to space.
It's kind of like the argument of 'We shouldn't be working on learning how to fish! We must stay on land because we could do more for our crops!'.
There are a lot of advantages to more space funding from public and private sources. We must remember that great countries have been founded bettered society (US, Australia, NZ for examples) because of people traveling long distances for colonization and resource acquisition.
A few quick-hit reasons on why the moon and space in general is good for the economy:
- Helium 3. As we all know, energy production is very critical in concerns to the economy. 15 tons of HE3 per year would fuel America's energy needs for a year. The moon has billions of tons of this resource. At a current valuation of $1.5 million USD per KG, it is quite lucrative to utilize. HE3 is also useful in refrigeration, as a reaction between HE3 and HE4 results in a cooling process that can cool items down to 2-4 Kelvin.
- Solar energy. Without clouds, and direct access to the sun, we can generate far more energy in space from solar plants than here on earth. Very critical if we want renewables.
- Minerals & Exotics. Some resources on earth are very difficult to extract such as gold, platinum, and aluminum. On asteroids, these elements are very easy to obtain. For example, the asteroid 433 Eros has much gold, platinum and aluminum which is very easy to extract (no mining is required other than simply digging up the asteroid).
There are millions of other reasons - Metal foams, colonization, science, ect.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
