It seems one of majors long term justification for space exploration is harvesting solar energy from space and beaming power to the billions of people living on Earth.
But this seems to be a trillion dollar plus “project” and something which can only occur once we are already mining the Moon and making solar panels [solar harvesting infrastructure] on the Moon [or using asteroid as raw material].

So only way one can harvest solar energy from space and export it to Earth, is for the electrical power to be cheaper in space than it is on Earth. And at the moment electrical power in space is about 1000 times the price than compared to earth.

So roughly a nearer term goal is to get electrical power in space to about $1 per Kw hour.
Or once electrical power is about $1 per Kw hour in space, one have realistic mad dreams of spending trillions of dollars to provide Earthling with clean, endless, and abundant and comparable low cost electrical power.

And it seems when one has electrical power in space which one can buy for $1 per Kw hour, than one will also be able to buy rocket fuel for about $100 per lb at the lunar surface. And not only cheaper rocket fuel, but everything made on the Moon would be cheaper- including human labor costs on the Moon. And so from such a position one do the economy of scale to bring costs down even further.

Or some imagine it’s possible to use economy of scale to launch solar panel from Earth to harvest solar energy from space, but I would say that if energy cost were 1/10th or less of existing cost on the Moon, it’s more economical to use the Moon instead of Earth a point to build and launch the solar infrastructure.
Or if things only cost about 10 times more on the Moon as compared to Earth then at that point in time, it is trillion plus mega-project which would generate hundred of billions
dollar per year from the 20 trillion kWh per year earth market. Or 20 trillion Kw hour
at 1 cent per Kw is 200 billion dollars per year.
So start by spending more 100 billion, spend hundreds of billions per year, and it one might finish it within 10 or 20 years, and getting 1/10th of it online and providing power within first 2 to 3 years. And say if takes 10 year to get to 1/10th of such capacity- then you are bankrupt [you would not get to 5th or 6th year].
So this requires lunar development to be developed so things can done in timely fashion. Or the project would be in prototype like stage, but surrounded by infrastructure that is more mature- or fairly dependable. Or such project may require some other largish project to done prior to this being attempted, such a large lunar telescope or a mass driver.
Or we can’t start it, within say 50 years, or say 30 to 40 years after one has started lunar water mining.
Of course another possible large project, could be say a Nuclear Orion launched from the Moon. Or large [typical size used on Earth] nuclear power plant is build on the Moon [or Mars]. Or all of the above.

So in near term, we looking at price point of about $2000 per lb of rocket fuel at lunar surface- that allows lunar export of rocket fuel. In decades that follow, and when lunar rocket fuel is at $100 per lb. It requires or it follows that we will have reusable spacecraft landing and leaving the Moon. Operationally is will like airlines flights- low maintenance, hundreds of flights before engine replacement/overhaul. if lunar rocket fuel is less than 500 per lb, it allows lunar rocket fuel to be shipped to Earth’s low orbit- assuming Earth launch by that time has not lowered considerably [which is very likely]. So reusable plus cheaper rocket fuel, makes getting the moon far cheaper than it is currently is to get to ISS and Mars would far cheaper than cost to currently get to the Moon [or GEO].

So with lunar rocket fuel at 2000 per lb, this is point of breaking thru the delta-v barrier
or it makes advantage of high ISP of Ion or nuclear *less* important. It could be like idea of using nuclear power for cargo shipping on Earth. Or we use nuclear power for submarines, aircraft carrier, a russian icebreakers, and etc. And by using nuclear power cargo ship one increase amount it ships, and lower cost, but it not done. It could be mostly not done because of laws and regulation, and similar laws would not apply regarding space. But another factor is that if cargo ships if had larger ocean to travel, they might have larger need of nuclear powered ships. And having rocket fuel available in space effectively shorten the ocean of space.
Or perhaps when Mercury or Titan become commercially viable, one will see a larger need for nuclear spacecraft.

(1) Luna-Glob lander (Luna-25) – Lunar pole lander – 2019
(2) Luna-Glob orbiter (Luna-26) – Lunar orbiter – 2021
(3) Luna-Resurs lander (Luna-27) – Lunar lander – 2023

Being positive, perhaps European participation will give the effort more cash and accelerate the schedule.

“The global space economy grew to $314.17 billion in commercial revenue and government budgets in 2013, reflecting growth of 4 percent from the 2012 total of $302.22 billion. Commercial activity — space products and services and commercial infrastructure — drove much of this increase. From 2008 through 2013, the total has grown by 27 percent.

Commercial space products and services revenue increased 7 percent since 2012, and commercial infrastructure and support industries increased by 4.6 percent.”

““Europeans want to cooperate with Russia on the lunar program,” Mitrofanov, who is the director of the Institute’s nuclear planetology department, told the COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) Scientific Assembly. “The final decision on their participation will be taken at a ministerial conference of the European Space Agency’s member countries.” He said his institute’s chief partner, the Lavorchkin Research and Production Association, was working on unmanned lunar stations Luna-25 (project Luna-Glob), Luna-26 and Luna-27 (both of the Luna-Resurs project). The Institute was developing research devices for these stations, which were planned to be launched in 2017, 2018 and 2019, he said.”

But an inflatable tent in a deep hole is not a city.

Dr. Spudis would of course know better but in my view the Moon is very stable compared to the Earth geologically. The trillions of dollars that have gone into star wars directed energy weapons more than likely generated the ideal solution to excavating an artificial cavern. Heat and Earthquakes make living deep under the Earth impractical but the Moon seems made for it. Just as deep space was made for the nuclear industry.

The cost of a 100 megaton hydrogen bomb is not much different than the cost for a 1 megaton hydrogen bomb. Using geology the right strata for the best design of weapon can be found and perhaps several miles down a cavern the size of a sports arena can be created in less than a second.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140808110715.htm

I may differ with Dr. Spudis and most of the regulars over the primary use lunar water resources will be used for. While liquid hydrogen and oxygen as rocket fuel derived from lunar ice is often discussed I believe such propellents will be limited to use mostly inside the magnetosphere. In my view water derived from lunar ice will enable Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit not as a massive chemical propellent load but as a massive space radiation shield. I expect eventually pure hydrogen beam propulsion will replace conventional rockets as the prime mover in cislunar space.

Mining the Moon for silicon type materials comes after excavating a radiation sanctuary and alloys come after silicon. My reasoning is that excavating underground factory/city space will be followed by solar energy industry manufacturing and then by metal industries because the solar energy will be needed to refine ore. With pulse propulsion discs the solar energy arrays can be lifted off the Moon thousands of tons at a time. With these arrays in GEO a beam propulsion cislunar railroad can be realized.

Mining for platinum on asteroids seems quite ridiculous to me compared with supplying clean cheap electricity to the entire planet and exploring the solar system with atomic spaceships. We have the planetary resources to build a “space navy” as Dr. Spudis has proposed, but we have no fear or profit motive driving us as yet. It will take one or the other or both.

At the moment, there is only one commercial activity in space and this is launching and operating satellites. So the x amount of money spent to make a satellite, launch it into orbit, and operate it, is less than the amount revenues gained from using the satellites. Satellites lower the costs of doing many different things on Earth, and globally the satellite industry has gross revenue of 200 billion dollars per year.
If one had a lunar industry which had gross revenue of 20 billion dollars per year, we be in a different world and different world in similar sense that having 200 billion satellite industry makes our world different than compare not having this commercial satellite activity.

A large portion of the 200 billion dollar of satellite related revenue is related to government spending, and likewise one could have 100% of revenue related to lunar activity being governmental spending. So if space agencies of world spent in total 20 billion on lunar activity, per year one could call that a lunar industry with gross revenue of 20 billion per year. It’s not really what I mean, but we can still imagine it being world changing. Or one could hope some commercial activity could emerge from such an activity.

In terms of commercial vs State enterprises, something like 70% of oil production on Earth is directly controlled by State enterprises, by that I am generally referring to:
“Today over 90% of reserves are under the control of national oil companies (NOCs) which are owned, at least in part, by the governments sitting on the oil in question. ”
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582522-day-huge-integrated-international-oil-company-drawing.
So globally world governments are dominate player in oil industry, as there are in satellite industry, and could be thought of as being a dominate player related to all lunar activity.

But in any case, whether 100% or a some degree of government involvement, one still needs to mine lunar water in a profitable manner. Related to this is a concept [which is only used related to “space development”] called ISRU [in situ resource utilization]. The idea of ISRU is extracting local resources, so as to lower the cost of lifting such resources from Earth. So one launches 20 tons equipment from Earth and it makes 100 tons of water, and in total one does have to lift the 80 tons of water as payload from Earth. So the idea behind ISRU is cost reduction, by making it so one needs less rocket launches in order to do space exploration.

So we divide the issue into ISRU and/or commercial mining. One is to save costs of a space program, and the other is to make money by investment of capital with expectation of return on that investment.
One could imagine, that NASA doing commercial mining, and one imagine a commercial mining company “doing” ISRU- in other words getting resources from the Moon, to lower their “program costs” [total dollar amount needed for investment].
I would say it’s easier to imagine a Chinese space agency commercially mining lunar water, as the Chinese are a communist country, and it doesn’t have congressional laws prohibiting NASA from engaging in such “commercial activity”. Obviously one can change laws, though one might take a moment to wonder why such laws were considered necessary.

I would say the Moon has a huge potential connected of having commercially minable water. And in terms of ISRU, that extracting water at Mars would be more practical than compared to the Moon.
Mars doesn’t have commercially minable water, and the Moon might have commercially minable water, but in terms of ISRU, Mars has higher potential value.

The end game in terms of having commercially minable water on the Moon, is connected to the need to export from the Moon. And same rule would apply to Mars, and therefore this should be enough of explanation of why Mars does not have commercial minable water.
And in addition It appear to me, it could be cheaper exporting lunar rocket fuel to Mars orbit, as compared to exporting Mars rocket fuel to Mars orbit. But all one has to do in terms of lunar export, is focused on exporting to Lunar low orbit- in terms of minimum requirement. And such minimum requirement in terms of Minable Mars would be Earth high orbit.
If one has mining on the Moon, then it creates a possibility of having a minable Mars and it also makes more likely to mine asteroids.

At moment the moon is not minable, what is needed to exploration of the Moon to find and determine where to mine lunar water. And what discovered, includes the possibility that the Moon does not have minable water.

According to the linked article this series of missions have been delayed by three years each.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_2014.html

Too Bad. They would indeed be useful.