Russia, according to one report, is planning to colonize the moon by 2030. While this news may be speculative, alarmist, or possibly not even based in reality, we still wanted to know if moon colonization in 16 years is even possible. So we asked Dr. Nadine G. Barlow, a professor and associate chair in the physics and astronomy department at Northern Arizona University, for some answers. Watch out for the abrasive lunar dust, people.
Any ballpark on how expensive would it be to do so?

The cost depends on how many people you would send to colonize the moon and how many shipments of supplies and materials would be necessary to establish the colony. A typical cost to send humans and materials from Earth to the moon is about $50,000 per pound. The result, even if lunar resources are used to construct the habitat, usually has a lower estimate of several tens of billions of dollars to establish a colony on the moon.

“The cost of colonizing other worlds will be extremely expensive and thus would take an incredible amount of a single country’s overall budget. Therefore, human exploration and colonization of other worlds will likely become an international effort with the cost spread across several countries rather than a Space Race to beat others to the lunar surface. “