Whackjob's infrastructure suggestion.

[Whackjob]

I've got something of an odd mind, and at times I have difficulty in clearly explaining an idea, so instead I will invoke storytime. This is the best way I can put the idea in my head into yours.

You put a lander on the Mun with a special module that permits structure planning. Nearby you land a container full of scrap metal. You undock a welding rover and drive it over to the container. From the planner module, you designate a nearby proximity as a scrap dump. Your welder rover then can pick up as much scrap as it can hold, and you drive it over to the designated area. You begin construction on a series of low walls that prevent scrap stored within from moving about too much in the lower gravity. After so long in real time, the walls are done and now you can store a larger amount of scrap metal.

You planned ahead and there's much scrap in reserve. You then designate and build a rover shop and a smelter. With the rover shop you design and build something that can both ferry around more scrap in a bucket and dig up the regolith to process. You carry it over to the smelter which you've manned with a couple Kerbals. They then process that regolith into fine metals which you don't get the use of until they're done with it first. The end product is more "scrap metal" which you get when they're done playing with it.

Now that you've got a means of supplying scrap that isn't wholly dependant on shipments off-world, you can begin in earnest. Comfort and health is a concern, so you construct a living space with airlocks. IVA shows a large internal room where Kerbals happily move about in the lower gravity. You add on a cafeteria which dispenses food and snacks. A sleeping pod where your Kerbals can get some much needed shut-eye. And so on.

Finally, you decide to make this a major production hub, as lifting off the Mun is less taxing than from Kerbin. You process even more regolith and build a new VAB plus liftoff pad. You name your new colony "Selene" and you're in business.

This is my idea, anyway. I know the idea is space exploration, but at the same time, isn't colonizing other places a major part of it? Even NASA has considered production on the Moon, and for making it a staging point for further excursions.

[Beeman]

Sounds like the Mars One program but more kerbal-centric. Sending down supplies and having rovers build them up before sending humans(or kerbals in this case) down there. Would be pretty good, I reckon, but maybe for a mod.

They do have some kind of mining planned or something like that, though, says the wiki...so maybe it could be a mod/extension of that system?

Either way, extensive planetary base(and even orbital station) building is very compelling and hopefully some of that makes it into the vanilla game.

Core functionality like this should at least somewhat be in the base game...then have various mods to tweak and expand upon it all.