These orange glass spheres and fragments are the finest particles ever brought back from the Moon. The particles range in size from 20 to 45 microns. The orange soil was brought back from the Taurus-Littrow landing site by the Apollo 17 crewmen. Scientist-Astronaut Harrison J. Schmitt discovered the orange soil at Shorty Crater. The orange particles, which are intermixed with black and black-speckled grains, are about the same size as the particles that compose silt on Earth. Chemical analysis of the orange soil material has show the sample to be similar to some of the samples brought back from the Apollo 11 (Sea of Tranquility) site several hundred miles to the southwest. Like those samples, it is rich in titanium (8%) and iron oxide (22%). But unlike the Apollo 11 samples, the orange soil is unexplainably rich in zinc. The orange soil is probably of volcanic origin and not the product of meteorite impact. - Source

More on these Orange Soil Samples and H.H Schmitt later

Right click here to download a high-resolution version of the image (7.22 MB)

Image derived from the Clementine global color data (in 415-nanometer and 750-nanometer wavelengths) showing the concentration of titanium in the soils of the lunar surface. The highlands are very low in titanium, while the maria display many units of widely varying titanium content. Most of the very high titanium mare basalts (first discovered in the samples returned by Apollo 11) are found in Mare Tranquillitatis and parts of Oceanus Procellarum. See Blewett et al. (1997) for details on this method of titanium mapping. 

Noticing a pattern yet? All major minerals of importance are concentrated around Copernicus crater, and this imaging is only scraping the surface!

Some He3 is available on Earth. It is a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which would supply us with about 300 kg of He3 and could continue to produce about 15 kg per year. The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg, and another 187 kg is mixed up with the natural gas we have stored; these sources are not renewable at any significant rate.
 

Copyright © 2004 Artemis Society International

The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria. - Source - Artemis Society International

That amount of He3 would produce approximately 20,000 terra-watt years of thermal energy, about 10 times the amount if we burned all the fossil fuels on Earth. without the polution. Another way to state it, 25 tons would power the United States for 1 year, which is about the maximum size of the payload of a Space Shuttle

The Payoff

A guess is the best we can do. Let's suppose that by the time we're slinging tanks of He3 off the moon, the world-wide demand is 100 tonnes of the stuff a year, and people are happy to pay $3 billion per tonne. That gives us gross revenues of $300 billion a year.

To put that number in perspective: Ignoring the cost of money and taxes and whatnot, that rate of income would launch a moon shot like our reference mission every day for the next 10,000 years. (At which point, we will have used up all the helium-3 on the moon and had better start thinking about something else.) - Source - Artemis Society International

More on Helium 3 Fusion  and H.H Schmitt later

Dr. Larry Taylor director of UT’s Planetary Geosciences Institute in Knoxville says, “The moon is an orbiting space station. All the things you might need for planetary travel are there—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and other essentials. You can find ways to process or mine the moon and its soil, but there’s a lot of stuff up there we could use down here too. The abundance of helium on the moon represents “the Persian Gulf of energy in the 21st century.” Helium, with an atomic mass of 3, could have huge importance for generating energy on earth. In 1999 Taylor wrote, “There is more than 100 times more energy in the helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and natural gas on earth.”

Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The He3 is mainly imbedded in an ore called ilmenite.

A space vehicle with a payload bay the size of a space shuttle could bring back enough helium-3 to generate the electricity to satisfy the United States’ needs for a full year.

Particles of hydrogen and helium in the solar wind that strikes the moon become embedded in the rocks and soil. This doesn’t happen on the earth because our atmosphere and our magnetic field shield our planet from these solar particles.

It has been estimated that helium 3 would have a cash value of $5.7 billion a ton in terms of its current energy equivalent to oil at <$40 per barrel oil.

Full Paper by Guy Cramer Here

However, a loophole in Space Law allows individuals and companies to hold Mineral Rights on the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. Growing concern from Scientists that these rights may be held hostage have been alleviated by a three man North American team; Dr. Joseph Resnick, Dr. Timothy R. O'Neill and Guy Cramer (ROC-Resnick/O'Neill/Cramer team) who have acquired the mineral rights for 95% of the side of the moon that faces Earth, the polar regions and 50% of the far side of the moon. - Source