Just Post

At a very minimum you could use the research bases at Antarctica as an example and give the same objections and same reasons for having a Moon base with similar number of people. Exploitation of resources makes even the worst places suddenly desirable, so that's the next question - does the Moon have resources for us, now or for future need? I think it could, and it's a great place to launch raw material from vs. Earth. Would it ever be a large settlement though, I doubt it.

I've always been a proponent of Gerard O'Neill's vision (The High Frontier). Why spend so much effort to escape from a gravity well to then go back to any other gravity well with a different and hostile environment (like Mars). Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to everywhere else, you just need enough delta-v and time. Space settlements would be a larger investment than we've ever done before, but once started they would multiply and return so much more.

Caveat, this is my past self talking. I now think the window of doing such things has closed on us, ironically when we need it the most. Such as removing eggs out of one basket that's dying, moving industry out of the biosphere it's choking, giving a new goal for humanity that all could participate and create their own worlds. It was a nice vision though, we could have done a lot.