George Sowers, professor of practice in the space resources program at Colorado School of Mines, was recently interviewed by Nature about what it would take to build a sustainable base on the Moon.
From the article:
Researchers relish the idea of a base for conducting experiments on the Moon and as a way to trial technologies for heading to Mars. Private firms, however, are increasingly tempted by the possibility of mining oxygen and hydrogen - which power rockets - from lunar ice. If that does pan out, then the Moon could become a refuelling station, radically reducing the expense of space travel.
"Water is the oil of space, and there's mounting evidence that it's there in economically viable deposits," says George Sowers, an aeronautical scientist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden and previously chief scientist at United Launch Alliance, a firm in Centennial, Colorado, that provides launch services for the US government.