How many times must it be pointed out that the Americas were so hospitable to man, that they were in fact settled long before Columbus? Once you got there you could be self sustaining within a few weeks. The moon (or space) is inhospitable, there's nothing there, you have to carry everything from Earth at enormous cost. Just build the ship on earth, and assemble it in LEO if it's too large. The total number of launches will be greatly reduced.

What lunar resource? Rocks?

Have you considered the huge amount of infrastructure needed to extract resources? Now multiple that by a few thousand dollars per kilogram. Do the math.

Just invest in medical research directly. Like remote (or just local robotic) surgery. Cut out the middleman.

So engage in basic research. Why do it indirectly?

2000 tons of fuel+oxidizer is not "some megatons". In fact it is closer to two kilotons. They're not "lighting that candle", they're riding the most expensive machine ever created, with much of the cost invested to improve its reliability.

It's still a lot less reliable, but these guys are not throwing their lives away as you imply.

Which then became a unary system again.

When was the Internet controlled by its users?

No, cm/s.

Union rules requires at least three workers over four days

They could have achieved this without lighting the engines.

This way they were actually able to get it done.

Just send already-dead astronauts. You will need to launch a lot less consumables, life support, shielding, and soft-landing equipment. The science return will be impacted, but not by much.

Deccelerating something from orbital velocity is just as difficult as accelerating it to orbital velocity in the first place, except you've expended all your fuel already. Much easier to use the atmosphere.

Mining water from an extraterrestrial body, with or without humans, is science fiction at the moment. I don't see how you can make 10 year plans that involve this.

As to passenger-less travel, I'm all for it. It's so much cheaper, faster, safer, and efficient that I don't see why anyone bothers with people.

That adds a huge amount to the fuel load.