Another under-acknowledged benefit of the moon is that a radiation safe environment can be created by covering a hole or digging a cave.
That's much cheaper than constructing an entire space habitat- which has to be abandoned during periods of high solar activity anyway.
Moon production of oxygen, simple aluminum products, glass, and food are early lo-tech possibilities.
Lack of hydrogen is the moon's killer drawback- it's value for fuel is so high it would be worth mining for, or even producing it by nuclear processes.
And if moon-supplied raw materials prices are lower by a factor of ten (a hundred even?) or more than Earth materials, space-based manufacturing will be no longer a fantastically expensive niche industry but would have mass-production possibilities.
Heck, the control of lunar-supplied materials would make a moon base so valuable, it's biggest expense could be militarily defending it against competitors!
The Moon has hydrogen. It just happens to occur only in a very specialized environment: the permanently dark areas near the poles. The Clementine and Lunar Prospector data indicate at least ~ 10 billion metric tons of water ice, at both poles. That's an equivalent amount of rocket fuel for roughly four million Shuttle launches, or, one Shuttle launch per minute for over seven and one-half years!!
Oh, by the way, a Shuttle launch is way too much power for a lunar liftoff -- I just gave those numbers for comparative purposes. The point is there's plenty of hydrogen on the Moon. You just have to go get it where it is, just like petroleum on Earth.