That would be a great plan, except for the microwave transmission (the downlink area would be too dangerous to enter, and would be huge, and would heat the world, and mostly wouldn’t be able to function unless the Moon were somewhere overhead), and the fact that Helium-3 still requires controlled fusion technology of some sort.
Dr O'Neil wrote a book at NASA's urging. It was titled "The High Frontier" and proposed the development of lunar mining colonies and satellite factories where orbital satellies would be constructed. These power satellites would collect solar energy, convert it to low intensity microwaves and transmit it to the earth where it would be converted into electricity.
large antenna farms would collect the low intensity microwaves and there would be little to no environmental impact. One of the pictures in the book show an antenna field in west Texas that is almost a sqaure mile in size. Below the antenna cattle graze and birds fly through the beam iwth NO adverse effect. In the late 80s NASA tested this by transmitting microwaves between two mountain at White Sands. the technique was proved and we need to return to the moon to and do this stuff.
Of course if you want to encourage students to study math and science, develop alternative energy sources which are GREEN and improve our economy we need to increase Space funding.
PS read the High Frontier and google O'Neil!
I thought the plan was to transport the H3 back to earth, use it here and transport the generated electricity in the usual way. It’s low mass fuel, and the moon’s weak gravity wouldn’t be a barrier to transport. The concept of microwaving the energy to earth comes from a different paradigm - having orbiting solar generating stations, in which you would need some way to wirelessly transmit the energy to earth.
And while the downlink area might not be dangerous, and further might not be heating the world, or causing environmental harm - there’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that the envirowackos would claim that it did do all those things.