Nice article here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41972290

  I've heard the US has a company that is planning on doing mining on the moon. they have all the needed permissions.  I guess they have to find something worth while on the moon. It's a private company and they don't provide any information.
Carl2

Planetary Resources had a Kickstarter campaign that I donated $100USD to a few years back so that they could create and launch some spacecraft to survey asteroids for water and other valuable materials in the future, and I've been following them rather closely. Sadly, one of their early prototype craft were lost in that rocket explosion back in 2014, but they were able to get a later generation version, the Arkyd 6, scheduled for a launch on the Space Research Organization's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on February 15th, roughly a month away. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things go with this, because it marks (for me, at least) the first real step toward the diaspora of Man into the stars since Apollo. We really can't see large scale colonization of either the Moon, or Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, until we have a MUCH larger Human presence in space, and that can't happen until we have a way to find cheaper sources of spacecraft construction materials and fuel components than lifting them from our planet's gravity well. Exciting times, Mates! and we're here to witness the very beginning!