I disagree. You're overlooking several things:
For national security reasons, you want to be on the moon. China has already demonstrated how easy it is to take down a satellite.
1; helium three, immense value fuel for power plants.
2; see #1
3; one insane microbiologist viewing humans as parasites and a moon colony would be a lost opportunity for the survival of the human species.
The above is not necessarily true, H3 is thought to be the ideal fuel for fusion based power plants. H3 is hideously expensive here on Earth but relatively abundant on the Moon. So if a fusion based power plants is ever built, the H3 on the moon might make it profitable to go there. Also, if do not know what else is on the moon. So a blanket statement about nothing of value being there is rather foolish to make.
Alaska gave us nothing in the beginning.
Oil? Not until the 20th century.
Gold? Not until around 1900.
Fir? We were not short of that to the point to buy the place.
And anything we did get out of there cost much more to ship back here then it was worth for the first 40 years. Most people wanted the government to instead rebuild the nation after the war.
No one called Stewards Icebox because they knew it was full of gold and oil.
The point is that you stake the territory, then you get what you can. Costs will fall as new methods are employed.
Or you can leave it all to other countries that will gladly sell the spoils to us at a greatly inflated cost.
Well, if large swaths of ice are found on the moon (as studies suggest), you would simply need to mine the ice and it would provide O2, water, and humans would provide the Co2 for plant growth. A preliminary base would do very well on the pole, where both solar power and ice are plentiful.
Ilmenite - which is plentiful on the moon - provides excellent titanium, iron, and oxygen when broken down.
Anthorite - also plentiful - produces silicon, calcium, and oxygen.
The only thing really missing would be nitrogen and meat. The moon, however, and the technologies created would definitely allow people to leave to other planets within a decade or so. We should have never left the moon, but we simply didn’t have the technology to have a sustained presence in the 60’s - we do now.
By the way, I saw the Newt Gingrich speech yesterday on the C-SPAN video. I'm not a big Newt fan but his speech really impressed me. No notes, no teleprompter, yet gave a very inspiring and informative speech right off the top of his head.
Sadly, I agree. However, all that a properly run government does is a waste of resources: courts to punish criminal activity and settle private disputes, and military spending for attacks that rarely come.
The question is, then: what is justifiable waste? A moon base for 'scientific' or 'jobs' purposes, no. Stopping a Chinese orbital missile base, yes. This is why the Constitution permits Army and Navy spending, but not scientific spending (not that anyone notices that, anymore).
If Newt can keep U.S. rocket/missile technology ahead of China's, then I think that "giant waste of resources" is actually well spent.
Petroleum was not a major economic resource in 1867 when they made the Alaska purchase, and oil was not discovered there until almost 40 years later in 1896. Just because a commodity isn’t valuable yet or discovered yet doesn’t mean it won’t be later, for purposes not yet imagined.