"just weeks after the indian space program and nasa announced evidence of water on the moon....."

from there, it's just my logical assumptions. if you think there is water below the surface of the moon, how do you look for it?

you'd have to drill. but you can't just bring a big ass drill in the cockpit with you, you'd have to assemble it.

so you'd have to send men to the moon, which is more expensive because you have to make preparations to make the trip sustainable to human life, as opposed to machines.

then, the men would have to assemble the drill and set it up to drill hundreds of feet below the surface, possibly thousands.

i dont know shit about drilling, but i'd imagine that would at the very least take a couple of days. then they gotta get back in a vessel that will take them back to earth.

Option B creates a several mile crater in seconds.
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as for the stuff about the space station and smaller crafts, that's just gravity. shuttles don't use that much fuel in space because once they get a thrust to move them in a direction, there isn't air to create friction to slow it down. so a spaceship that was leaving FROM space could be the size of an SUV (with future technology advances) because it doesn't have to escape Earth's atmosphere.