Coming back to Buck's post, with more comments and help from Jeff Foust, I'd like to add to the debate.

The Russian Soyuz can spend up to 6 months in space, thanks to H2O2, but this becomes H2+02 after that long. But they're thinking about a version capable of spending a year in space and it has to do with helium preventing the H202 from escaping if I remember well.

The Zond spacecrafts used a technique called the skip glide or even double skip returning back from the Moon and they could aim at a precise point on Earth.

Also, to go to the Moon, why not have a Shuttle C derivative launch a moon-bound spacecraft, unmanned, into LEO and immediately afterwards, launch a much smaller capsule to LEO (with a conventional man-rated ELV), have it rendez-vous and dock to the large moonship and send the whole stack to TLI, land directly on the Moon (or even in the Moon, in a man made cave).
The capsule would have a service module meant to rendez-vous with the moonship and also liftoff from the Moon, once the mission is ended there.
Once on the Moon, a spacecraft can't float away; it stays where it landed.
Now: it was quite difficult for Dave and Jim to dig a hole in the Moon! Nobody's been very deep and I wonder how a hole big enough for a shelter can be made.

Raoul