In the vein of the blog post about a one-way trip to the Moon or Mars, I've been thinking about what sources of income a commercial lunar colony would have. I'm not thinking mining helium-3 or beaming solar power back to Earth or tourism... I'm thinking, if you were to send a crew on a one-way trip in, say, ten years, what could you do for money to justify the expense of the mission (assuming, of course, that you're going to want to rotate crew every couple of years or so).

The first thought that came to mind was a reality television show. Yeah, I know, cheesy... I hate "reality" TV, but I'd watch a show about a group of explorers living a working on the Moon. Sell the rights, sell advertising, heck, sell sponsorships on the uniforms of the crew members (a la NASCAR or golf). After all, GTFH is designed to start with a media company... it's a natural fit. You could even put up webcams and put ads on the web pages to bring in a little bit of money.

Also, a manned crew on the Moon is uniquely situated to perform contract R&D for NASA, the EU, JAXA, the Russians, the Chinese, etc. Just make sure your contract includes provisions allowing you an unlimited license to use the fruits of any research royalty-free.

When rotating crews home, bring Moon rocks with you and sell them to collectors and researchers on Earth. There may be laws regulating the selling of Moon rocks, but I'm not sure they apply if you go up there and collect the rocks yourself.

You could probably lease a crew slot to Earth governments on a rotating basis and make pretty good money doing that. For example, suppose Argentina wants to have a space program and put somebody on the Moon. They may be a long ways away from doing that themselves, but could gain a lot of prestige by having one of their top scientists actually conducting research on the Moon for several years, especially if they could get there before the Chinese, Russians, etc.

This is a little more extreme, but send the crew out to place reflectors across a large array of the surface to create ads on the Moon's surface (no permanent damage... you can pick up or re-arrange the reflectors as needed). Imagine how much a company like Microsoft might pay to have the Windows logo emblazoned across the face of the Moon!

Any other ideas?