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Naveen Jain's startup, Moon Express, is a contestant in Google's Lunar X-Prize competition. They made the news recently with a little writeup in Fortune. It's a short little, 'imagine the possibilities piece' which some may find interesting. In the article Jain talks briefly about his aspirations for Moon Express. The chief points of interest for me are mining the moon for Helium-3 or precious metals such as platinum. There is also a little bit about storing your DNA on the moon for $50, which is a neat, albeit cheeky, idea.

Depending on how the Helium-3 is deposited on the moon, mining this material may be a much bigger challenge than Jain wants to undertake. If the deposits are uniform across the surface, they are likely to be very low density deposits. This means that lots and lots of lunar soil would need to be mined to generate small supplies of Helium-3. I don't remember the exact numbers and estimations for these deposits.

Mining precious metals seems like a better bet. The article specifically mentions platinum. If I were mining the moon I would be checking the market prices and lunar distribution of rare-earth minerals, too.