Prior to the Manhattan Project a nuke was thought to be decades off. The US mobile tens of thousands of people (most who had no idea what they were helping with) to take something that was decades away and rapidly speed it up.

In the avenue that we have been talking the moon isn't a good source of gold, silver, etc. It does have one particular thing that is extremely difficult to get in the US and that is Helium 3. Helium 3 is what fusion reactors will likely need and it is also big in quantum computers due to its crazy good cryogenics properties