I would like to give a tribute to Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who on July 3rd, will be 87 years old. He was on the last crew of Apollo and the first to be a scientist not connected with aeronautics. He was also a senator from New Mexico (hence the thumbs up during the Trump Admin when Artemis was revived), and a "civil" scientist at the UW-Madison for a period.
We could use him again as senator and he could show you what a non-diseased politician and Republican can do. As a geologist he realized the regolith on the moon would melt when exposed to microwaves- so quite easily buildings can be erected on the moon. Also the low gravity means supporting members do not have to be as strong, so possibly multi-story buildings would be easy to construct, or even vehicles. Jack pushed for fusion on the moon as an energy source- and I am all for fusion research there rather than on earth. Jack wrote about base requirements at Shackleton crater, using ice to generate O2 and propellant. There is no reason why robotics should not be front and center for mining operations on the moon, which would be like open-pit mining here on Terra. These would not be like R2D2, but more like automated objects of large machinery. There is no reason why some automated robotic examinations of the moon cannot take place immediately, except there is no plan. A crew of 4 for a month, four times a year at the moonbase, is how they intend to start.
Dr Schmitt also analyzed the geology at Taurus Littrow, where Apollo 17 landed. In 2 days Dr Schmitt and Cmdr Eugene Cernan managed to visit several stations, take cores, rock samples, and a gravity reading(possibly w/o a tripod). They did not have a rocket sled, or jetpack, but instead used something that resembled a hippetty-hoppety E-dune buggy. You could not find a piece of real estate on the front range of the Rocky Mountains like the Apollo landing site. IT is on a wrenched crustal block, collapsed gravitationally, draped with ejecta from immense impact basins. Boulders as large as houses, and ejected fragments described as plutons. Much of what we know about the moon is from these mapping projects, the field work of the Apollo astronauts, and the analyses of the rocks returned with them. If we had understood what they did, no one would be saying we were bored by Apollo 13. The seismometer deployed by Apollo 17 helped us understand the moon is differentiated like the earth into an iron core, mantle, and crust. Well done men!
There is lots of titanium on the moon- up to 2% in the basaltic melt of the basins. And if that doesn't knock your socks off, consider all the undifferentiated plutonic bodies buried in the moon which could be made of anything- maybe gold.