Maybe for solid masses not in an atmosphere, meaning the payload can be a ball and doesn't have to have a pencil shape and doesn't need to point in any particular direction, maybe that can work to simply lob rocks or aluminum ingots into earth orbit.

Except just think about that for a second. Lobbing rocks from the moon towards earth...

And why would we want to do this anyway? What resources are so valuable on the moon that it's worth getting them that way?

The payload would actually have to have rockets, fuel, computers, heat shielding, and a means to reshape itself so that it can: stop it's own tumble after launch, deploy glide wings, and survive reentry to a controlled landing so that we don't have to use rockets from Earth to go collect the payload from orbit.

It's all surely physically doable but why?

Even if orbit was the final usage destination not Earth, like to build stations, that still seems like a stretch.