Humans want to mine the moon. Here's what space law experts say the rules are

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5. Tritium mining might be worth it

If tritium-based fusion becomes a reality, the energy you get from the tritium should exceed the energy cost of mining and transporting it, especially once you can close the loop and use energy from tritium to mine more tritium.

That accomplished, the moon becomes a good source of materials for construction of space structures, and water and oxygen and fuel to use in those structures, cheaper at least than using Earth-extracted materials.

Perhaps once infrastructure is well established and supplied with relatively cheap energy, it might turn out to be economically feasible to use the moon to supply Earth-based needs for things like rare earth elements.