Questions & comments:

Why should solar energy be collected on the Moon instead of LEO?

Lunar minerals could be mined and shipped back to Earth.. Bullshit. The cost per pound would bankrupt almost any project. Most materials cost from fractions of a dollar to a few dollars per pound. That includes depreciation on equipment and transport. These would go way up for lunar materials.

.. or used for Moon-based manufacturing of lunar hotels and science facilities. Yes. There are how many lunar hotels? How many space tourists per day? What science facilties can be built cost effectively on the Moon compared to Earth?

Where was the focus on CATS that could support a whole new economy of scientists, colonists and lunar tourists?

Why put huge telescopes on the Moon? Current plans for awesome scopes call for free flying or orbital space scopes.

Want to guess how hard it would be to finde the small fraction of Earth rocks on the Moon let alone the ones containing valuable data?

I asked Larry earlier about a radio telescope. The only thing I know of that might be really superior on the farside of the Moon. However it seems to me that a large Earth based intereferometer might be far more cost effective based on what's goiing on with optical telescopes. If not that, how about a free flying radio interferometer in the outer solar system (Jupiter orbit or beyond) where radio noise from Earth would be reduced by a factor of 25 or more?

To be fair to the press there are people promoting these things, but as an engineer I've got to ask is it cost effective? I believe human's on Mars are more cost effective than robots at doing geology and astrobiology and have posted numbers to back it up. I doubt that anything I have heard pushed on the Moon is really the most cost effective way to investigate the subjects promoted.

Regards,
Mark