"...thus the trips to NEOs to access a whole lot of water in space! But as Zuppero pointed out years and years ago with water we can make big shielded space stations and space vehicles to travel anywhere we want to. Plus there's a whole lot of kerogens on inactivated comets that can provide carbon and nitrogen that the Moon lacks big time.

I've said all this before and no one remembers... "

I would say that the Moon *could be* more economical to mine water in regards to the short term.
And I see the issue as is how any viable economical mining in space gets established.

One question is how much does it cost to mine the first say 100 tons of water.
Suppose you had the task is mining 100 tons of water anywhere in space. Suppose it was a contest, and the winner is the one who does it the soonest at the least amount of cost. All you need to do is put relativity pure water in some container at the location of wherever you mining the water at.

And a second part of the contest, is another party has to choose where they are going to pick up this mined water and get it to somewhere in High earth orbit: L-1, GEO, or high lunar orbit.

Now, the cheapest location in space to pick up water and ship 100 ton of it to High Earth Orbit is from the surface of planet Earth- unless one imagines one can mine the first 100 tons of water for about 1 billion dollars or so from the Moon, NEOs, or anyplace other place other than Earth.

The only way mining water in space becomes viable is if you mine enough of it over some finite time period and are able to sell this over some finite time period.
In other words if the quantity in question instead of 100 tons is 1000 tons, and say within a decade of time, then perhaps looking at the details is warranted- it might be possible to be competitive with earth.

Now, if the question is how to get a million tons of water to High earth orbit within say 3 decades at the lowest cost,
NEOs could very well be the cheapest source.
Shipping a million tons of water to High earth orbit from earth at a cost of million dollar per ton [very cheap] costs 1 trillion dollars- for 1/2 of that amount, one could probably get it from NEOs, the Moon, or even Mars [or maybe even Europa or Mercury:)].
But I would bet that when one dealing with large quantities, NEOs would be the cheapest.

The way I see it, the demand for water in space, starting from moment one starts mining water, will be somewhere around 100 or 200 tons the first five years, and in the next 5 years maybe a 1000 or so tons, and following decade perhaps as much as 100,000 tons.

I don't see someone investing over 100 billion dollars and trying selling 10,000 tons in the first 5 years [or 10 years]. Unless it's *after* someone has already spent a few billion and has sold the first 100 tons.

So, can you mine NEOs at a cost of less than 10 billion dollars and get about 100 to 1000 tons of water within a decade- that is about the metric one is looking at.

And who is buying it?

With the moon, you need rocket fuel at the lunar surface to mine water, and you need other stuff that other parties can sell you- such as electric power, lunar made metal works, living quarters, and whatever. Companies could want to establish research/manufacturing facilities on the Moon- such as to make the solar panels for that company you buy power from. You could have various government projects who could need rocket fuel for their operations. But a large chunk of water you mine, could be used as rocket fuel to lift rocket fuel or water to lunar orbit, so as sell to those going to lunar surface. Or going to Mars, or going to NEOs, Mercury, Europa, or wherever.

So, on the Moon one could have local customers- town folk. And one has business involving exporting beyond the Moon.
The Moon is Hong Kong and China is Earth. NEOs aren't generally though of as destinations, instead it's where you get stuff to bring to destinations.

Though at some point, NEO might become destinations. And there could a nice business of dragging NEOs to various places in order for them to become better destinations.