I said:
"The Moon should be the primary focus of NASA, because of the possiblity of there being minable water (or just hydrogen) in the lunar poles.
Minable means commerically viable to mine.
Now, don't make the common mistake of assuming that because the cost of delivering water (or rocket fuel) to the lunar surface could be around $15,000 per lb, that if mined on the Moon, lunar water is worth 15,000 per lb. Instead using $15,000 to 20,000 per lb, one should assume a price of water is around $500 to 1000 per lb at the lunar surface and price of rocket fuel (LH&LOX) dependent largely on the cost of electrical power on lunar surface- roughly around $50-100 per kwh- thereby giving a ballpark price of around $1500-2000 per lb of rocket fuel on the Lunar surface.
A company mining lunar water will probably begin operations in which in the first couple years, they will only produce at best 100 tons per year, but thereafter production and demand could increase to hundreds to thousands of tons per year. To increase the market, lunar water will probably need to be exported to lunar and/or Earth orbits- and this one reason why you shouldn't put the price of lunar water of cost of deliver from Earth to the lunar surface- instead you should fiqure the cost of delivering water or rocket fuel from Earth surface to High Earth orbit- which is around $5000-8000 per lb. And compare this to the cost bring lunar water to High Earth orbit.
Now, you could assume the US govt would subsidize the cost of mining lunar water- and no doubt the govt should do this to some extent. But I think this should done by things like Zero Tax, and buying large quantity of rocket fuel- which could be used for Manned Mars mission. [Of course, the biggest and up front subsidy is exploring the Moon to determine if there is minable deposits of water]. For instance the govt could offer to buy 100 tons of lunar water delivered to L1 and having it converted into rocket fuel- say they offer to pay $7,000 per lb of rocket fuel [100 ton costing 1.4 billion]. This would be a lunar water mining subsidy, because if the govt instead merely asked for 100 tons of rocket fuel- then the easiest and most profitable way [least capital and least time] of doing this would be to simply ship the rocket fuel from Earth.
This should lead you to ask, if shipping fuel from Earth would cheaper and we are trying to lower costs, why don't we simply buy rocket fuel which is shipped from Earth?
And my answer is we should. In fact we should start doing this now. If done correctly, it would result in lowering the initial cost of mining lunar water and lowering risk due to having more knowables (or water mined from NEOs) and Manned Mars.
What I'm talking about is a govt subsidy- a program with the main goal of lowering launch cost. Which has the secondary goal of encouraging the development of gas stations in space. And gas station being a facility which can store, process water into LH&LOX, and tranfer rocket fuel to other space vehicles.
The scope of this govt program would be for several years, say, less than a decade and the total cost of entire program would less than 1/2 billion. The program would pay US launch companies for payloads of water delivered into orbit, these water payload would be called test payloads. Usually test payload are paid for if part of a govt launch development program or sometimes the launch company uses a test payload to prove the reliablity of a launch vehicle to a customer and/or to a party insuring a satellite. Since the payload can cost more than the launch vehicle and getting a satellite successful launched is more valuable than simply recovering insurance money for the lost of satellite from a failure of the launch vehicle, the actual value of a launch vehicle is largely dependent on the percieved risk of the launch vehicle. Only by successfully launching a payload to the desired orbit, can a launch vehicle adequately proof it's reliability- and the longer the string of successful launches increases the launcher actual value- unless the launch system has changes which introduce new risks or inconsistencies. This "environment" does not encourage innovation or new competition- instead it favors tried and known systems.
So, the govt merely offers to buy water payloads. For example, govt could say it was going to buy up to 100 tons of water payloads deliveried to LEO. And offers to pay far less for these payloads than compare to normal satellite launch prices. The govt would would offering to pay for something which a launch company may do, but could recieve no money for doing it. The govt already sort of does this, but instead using water (very cheap stuff) it uses govt paid for satellite/spacecraft which can cost the tax payer a hundred million dollars if the launcher fails. The private sector will also take this risk, if it trying get lots of launches and is willing to take the loss of first launch if it can get further launches at lower cost (gets an option to buy future launchs at lower cost). But risks are risks- they are not imaginary. It can make more economic sense to risk a payload which has a low value over risking a payload which has a high value. I believe if I'm remembering correctly, in about in a year or two of time, the miltary lost something like 3 billion dollars worth of satellite payload due to launch failure. If you could lower this risk by a 1/6 that alone would pay for a program costing 1/2 billion.
And an even larger return would be the lower cost of launch vehicles and insurance."