Hi Raoul -

It makes no sense to fly the re-entry heat shield to the surface and then back again. As for going anywhere, the purpose is long term work - and what you need for that is something wheeled, like a mobile home. You need shelter from radiation, and you do these with conrete sprayed onto inflated structures from the inside. You use Moon orbiting stations for fuel transfer, cargo transfer, and as an abort option... and you use landing frames to get stuff to the surface from there -

as to cost, if you're using commercial satellite laundhers in heavy configuration your costs are low -

By the way, if the new general designer's comments were not mistranslated, the new Russian Klipr folding wing craft is capable of earth re-entry from lunar orbit -

the question is what fuels to use... wonder what Klipr uses?

ep