Bill Ambrose indicates that future success in exploration and human habitation of the solar system will depend on space missions and settlements becoming more self-sustaining through exploitation of extraterrestrial (i.e., local) energy and material resources. For example, the Moon contains a wide variety of energy minerals and other resources that can potentially be used for manufacture of propellants for space transportation, volatiles for manufacture of chemicals, and metals for construction of solar power facilities, industrial plants, and structures for human habitation.
If water ice in polar regions on the Moon is proven to exist in large quantities, these resources could not only support human habitation but could also be used to manufacture rocket propellants, reducing dependency on Earth for these resources, thereby making human space exploration more economically viable. Moreover, the lower gravity well of the Moon could be used as a launching site for missions to Mars and other worlds in the solar system, given the possibility of water-ice and other lunar resources.
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