I think as far as the US is concerned the moon is now largely just a stepping stone and site for a base while the US moves out to bigger fish. I think the primary interest of the US is Mars with secondary interests in the asteroid belt and various of the outer planets moons.
As for the old Soviet moon rocket... yah that was a nice piece of work. Too bad it never really worked right. 30 seperate rocket thrust boosters. Proved impossible to ballance them all so the simpler US rocket worked while the nice but too complicated Soviet rocket was a miserable failure.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1883348.stm