re: McFly has a point...
"The right to develop and profit from a resource, and maintaining the principles of private property, is important if that resource is ever to be developed. Still, I seriously doubt there would be lunar mining today even without any restrictions on it. The technological hurdles are too high for the types of materials currently known to be useful or available on the Moon."
I think a more limiting factor, is having somewhere on Earth in which rockets can be launched. I think that only private launch site in the world being in the ocean [Sea Launch] points to what I'm talking about.