The big mistake was declaring the moon a public commons. Instead it should be private property, first come, first serve....get there and stake a claim!
I don't know that it would have made much difference, given the lack of harvestables on the moon. We don't even know how much water is up there, and there's no shortage of its main mineral elements - silicon, iron, calcium, aluminum - here on earth.
I'm deeply saddened that manned space exploration has atrophied - it was so inspiring to me as a kid (b 1970), then I grew up and realised that the spacefaring sci-fi I enjoy most is just not going to happen in my lifetime. I suspect I'm not alone in feeling cheated out of the promised future. At the same time, I'm unable to come up with a good economic argument for why we should go back to the moon or establish a moon base.
He3 is a fuel that can be used for aneutronic nuclear fusion -- a type of nuclear fusion with far less of a radioactive flux putting less demands on the wall material. The moon is one of the only sources (apart from the solar wind).
Which is not to say that it's a good idea, just that, were small fusion power-plants (for military applications, for example) ever achieved technologically, it may quite possibly require aneutronic fusion, and that a fuel source would start to really matter.
