Well, hold on there. A free surface atmosphere is not necessarily an absolute requirement for even quite large scale settlement of the Moon. Because it is so close, we may be able to ultimately have millions of people living there. It's so easy to get to, cosmically speaking, that it remains quite a good candidate for becoming a decent colony.
...
Anywhere else in the Universe, such an unprepossessing lump of airless rock would be of little interest to us, but right there...
Distances and costs don't work at all like on Earth though. On earth twice as far away means twice as expensive to send materials too generally speaking.
That is not true for Space at all.
Actually it is cheaper to send 1 ton of equipment to mars surface from Low Earth orbit (3.6 km/s Delta V) then to the lunar surface (5.67 km/s Delta V) today since Mars has an atmosphere that allows for aerobreaking.
In fact when you add up the numbers you could almost get stuff into Jupiter orbit for the same price as landing it on the moon (even if it of-course will take longer time to do so).
http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.pngDistances do apply in space only when you are transporting humans (that require extra food/energy to survive on longer journeys), but for a serious colony in such hostile environments the absolute majority of cargo transported will not be of human nature.