Politically correct first. NASA highlights that the crew will include a woman, a black, a stranger, in addition to the captain, a WASP. How can you do better when you’re an American Democrat? But what interest can this have in fulfilling a mission whose members should, a priori, be first highly qualified? None.
To be a little clearer, the answer is that in fact the crew is more a group of passengers and it is not essential that they be highly qualified at least to perform the various manoeuvres required for the navigation of their aircraft. Indeed, next year Artemis II must repeat the experiment (or test) of Artemis I, on the same orbits (around the Moon without going down), with the only difference being the presence of human beings on board. It has been proven that this Artemis flight can be fully robotic and we want to see this time how human beings can bear it. This Artemis II flight is therefore primarily a medical test (physiological and psychological) and astronauts will be the guinea pigs.
Artemis III will be a different mission, more complex on the astronautical plane since it is planned in this context to descend on the Moon and to go out on the lunar ground, which implies, besides the moon landing, the redeployment and return to a lunar and then terrestrial orbit allowing landing. This third mission is scheduled for 2025. If it goes well, there will be others. But all in good time!
Since Artemis I, which will no doubt be confirmed by Artemis II since technically the second one will not really be different from the first and we know that man can survive in an artificial environment of the type of the International Space Station (ISS) or the first lunar missions, we can wonder about the meaning of this return to the Moon.
We can say from the outset that the context is quite different from that of the 1960s/70s, where we sought above all the technical and political feat without taking much precaution for human life. Today the political importance remains (because the Chinese should not go for a walk on the Moon before the Americans) but the technical feat is not of the same importance because it is mainly a matter of redoing what we have already done even if we use today different technologies (because technologies, even if only computer science, have evolved a lot since that time).
A sustainable location on the Moon
Beyond that, the goal of the Americans is not simply to make incursions and excursions to the Moon, it is to settle there permanently. It seems to me that the main purpose is still political. The Americans want to mark their territory against the Chinese and facilitate their comings and goings by creating a minimum infrastructure allowing survival and an embryo of exploitation of local resources (the water ice in the bottom of some craters at the South Pole). You will notice that I am not talking about the Europeans, who are non-existent in this adventure except as auxiliaries of the Americans. Out of snobbery, they have always disdained manned flights.
The Americans probably want more, that is to say to conduct scientific expeditions of long duration and explore as many territories as possible. We now know only a few places in our satellite which can distort the conclusions drawn for the history of our solar system (see for example the importance and duration of the late great bombardment that could hydrate the terrestrial planets of the internal solar system). The second objective is to learn to live on another celestial body after learning to live in weightlessness in the ISS, because we still think that the next stage will be Mars and that we know that it will be more difficult than on the Moon because of the non-reducible duration of the missions and also the doses of cosmic radiation to which we will be exposed during the long journey of six months.
Personally I think that the establishment of a permanent station on the Moon can only serve in some important aspects as preparation for the inhabited exploration of Mars much more than for the exploration of the Moon.
Indeed the essential difference between the Moon and Mars is that on the Moon we can direct live from Earth, all kinds of robots to perform any task. The Moon is only 385,000 km away, which represents just over a second of time lag (constrained by the speed of light, absolutely essential). Directing a robot live on Mars is totally impossible due to the distance that evolves from 56 to 400 million km (the planets do not rotate at the same speed around the Sun and their orbits have a different length). The consequence is that any message for Mars or return of data from Mars to Earth takes three to 22 minutes depending on the date on which it is sent. Under these conditions it is impossible to conduct a fluid action on Mars without being present. We need to program, check, reschedule, resend orders. So we need men on Mars (assisting robots of course), we don’t need them on the Moon.
One can deduce from this that the primary interest of the return to the Moon is mainly political. However, there is also one aspect that is rarely mentioned but that is very important, and that is the commercial aspect of the business.
After the tests, there will be the exploitation of the tests. That is to say that NASA (or perhaps one day SpaceX online) will serve as a carrier for all kinds of companies. First, they will build the infrastructure, then they will use it (and of course, they will maintain it!). There will be researchers from various universities and institutes but also engineers who will want to test new technologies useful also in extreme conditions on Earth (what better than to have a «Moon» label for an agricultural greenhouse that could be sold for use in a hot desert or in the Antarctic, or for a coating that will resist extreme temperature variations!). And above all there will be tourists. Indeed, once fears about pitching malfunctions are alleviated (if not completely gone), there will be many “wealthy” people who want to try the experiment. There is a market for this, especially in the United States (imagine a wedding on the Moon!).
The result is that with the number of trips, there will be economies of scale and therefore an even larger market and therefore trips for Mars that will also become accessible while we can only go there every 26 months (which is obviously very bad for economies of scale). Currently the price of a launch of SLS (the rocket that enabled the Artemis I mission and that will allow the Artemis II mission) is $4 billion. But SpaceX’s first Starship will cost only one billion dollars and will be able to carry a lot more mass and passengers (10 times more). As the Starship is not yet ready (the first orbital flight test is imminent but not yet completed), the SLS may appear as a relay. It is obvious that if the Starship flies, the SLS will exit the circuit due to its difference in cost (largely due to its non-reusability unlike the Starship).
So manned flights to the Moon are less necessary than for Mars but they will be the economic instrument to go to Mars. No doubt that in «some time», we will be able to pay a week on the Moon for a package of 20,000 or 30,000 dollars while we will be able to pay a stay of 30 months on Mars (incompressible duration with two times six months of travel and 18 months of stay) for $200,000 or $300,000. These are the price orders that Elon Musk dangles, but again, it all depends on the number of flights and passengers to the Moon.
There is no doubt about the future sustainability of lunar institutions because solid and reliable infrastructure will be a safety factor: protection of human lives against radiation and the absence of breathing atmosphere and even atmospheric pressure. They will also allow: energy supply; cultivation of fresh products under greenhouse; exploitation of lunar minerals to limit the masses to be transported from Earth, these minerals being notably usable by 3D printers; fuel production and reserves; landing platforms; maintenance service.
However the environmental conditions will be very hard, much harder than on Mars, especially because of the low gravity (half of that prevailing on Mars) and the alternating day/night of 14/14 days. The Earth/Moon journey being neither long (two or three days), nor difficult and being possible at any time of the year, men will only make short stays there (of the order of the week, the month or the quarter), in order to recharge their batteries on Earth. When the dose of cosmic radiation they have cashed has become limiting to their health, they will remain on Earth. The conditions will be very different on Mars where the low atmosphere still gives protection against radiation and where the duration of the day is almost the same as on Earth (24 h 39). Moreover, once we are on Mars we will be forced to stay there in good conditions given the incompressible duration of the stay.
So Earth/Moon trips will be very frequent, a boon for SpaceX as a company and for future Martians who will have affordable transport prices, and therefore for Earthlings in general who will have new economic opportunities. Let us not forget that the expenses for the Moon or even at the beginning for Mars (until a stable population lives there) and the corresponding revenues will be expenses incurred or revenues collected on Earth!