I think the future of lunar bases has to be somewhere around the South or North Pole. You have less variation in temperature and more daylight hours.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There should be an international lunar base. That is certainly doable.
It certainly is possible to construct a moon base in such a way that crews could stay for extended periods of time.
The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees - and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse.
I don't think there is much value in trying to use the moon as a base to go to Mars. That's going into one gravity belt and having to get back out of it again. And the moon doesn't have a lot to offer as a resource base.
The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.
The moon's closeness is a huge advantage: To make it habitable, we would first have to bombard it with water-ice comets, a tricky endeavor best attempted with the many resources waiting on and near Earth.
Mars is far more attractive as an outpost colony for earthlings than the moon is.
If we don't do it, somebody else will. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do.
There's no doubt that the Moon is more than a handy night light and a hair restorer for werewolves. It's responsible for the substantial amplitude of earthly ocean tides. These are of obvious influence if you're a geoduck, a type of clam that people dig up at low tide.
If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it.