I thought I'd share this, so maybe later we can discuss its implications:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...04440707682179
This is a documentary that aired on the Discovery or Science channel (I forget which, but it's channel 193 on Dish Network). Start watching from the 42nd minute.
This engineer at Lockheed Martin, Larry Clark, has apparently found a way to process water out of ordinary moon rock (technically he's using imitation moon rock, but it should still work).
So I'm thinking that if this is true, doesn't that basically mean the surface of the Moon has an unlimited supply of rocket fuel on it? All you have to do is use electrolysis on the water to split it into hydrogen and oxygen, and you can burn it as rocket fuel.
So why don't we send an unmanned probe to the Moon, have it process itself some rocket fuel, then go back into low Earth orbit and pick up supplies from a space shuttle, bring them back to the Moon, refuel.... return to low Earth orbit..... etc.?