The discovery of water within the lunar soil earlier set off a buzz amongst the space geek community.
Instead of digging through 10 million tons of soil in order to get 10,000 liters of water, it might be easier (and cheaper) to simply ship tanks of hydrogen instead.
Unmanned space craft could help open up the lunar frontier by steadily seeding Luna with thousands upon thousands of hydrogen tanks upon it’s surface.
(Image Credit: Crystal Links- Lunar Mining)
Water can then be heavily filtered and recycled, allowing humanitiy to establish independent lunar outposts without the need of frequent supplies.
As a bonus, future settlers could use the spare hydrogen and oxygen to also create rocket fuel, which could help reduce the cost of missions elsewhere (whether it’s Mars, Ceres or even the moons of Jupiter).