Question

Exercise 5: Let's Build a Moon Base

Prompt: One day in the future we will decide to establish a colony on the Moon. Where should we put it?

Analysis Directions: Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of locating such a human habitat on poles. Should it be in a crater the near side, the far side, or at the? Highland? Maria?

Also, what site would be best for doing visible-light and radio astronomy from observatories on the Moon? Comment on each other’s lists.

Answer 1

The Advantages and Disadvantages of locating human habitat on poles

If we locate a colony at one of the lunar poles we would see that the problem of long lunar nights which is about 354 hours long is automatically being avoided.Also to add to this we have an advantage that colony that is established near the lunar poles would receive a continuous sunlight useful in the purpose of generating solar power. We also have a location here commonly know as the "peaks of eternal light" located at the lunar north pole that is continuously bathed in/exposed to sunlight.

Instead of bringing all fuel and other substances such as the oxidizer from Earth, liquid oxygen could be produced from lunar materials. For this we however need that hydrogen should be available from the lunar poles. The cost however will be much higher than that as compared to that which is produced on the Earth.

Best site for doing visible-light and radio-astronomy from observatories on the Moon

In general,Radio astronomy faces several challenges. Since radio light has a wavelength or smaller frequency and the wavelength of visible light is much smaller it is obvious that the radio antennas will require much larger area in order for it to be able to capture images which have clarity as much as those that are produced by the visible wavelength.One way we can do this is to have lots of smaller radio dishes and an alternate to this is to have a single large dish. It is a common problem that the

Radio astronomy also needs to overcome the radio noise that is produced by the human activity.This is the reason we need radio telescopes to be located in remote areas for it to function much efficiently.
The site would be best for doing visible-light and radio astronomy from observatories on the Moon is perhaps the far side of the Moon. At far side of the moon our lunar telescope would be hidden from Earth's view. At this site we would get a clear view of the radio sky. Radio telescope placed at this site would also be able to observe night sky at radio wavelengths that are also absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. Therefore we could say that the Moon would be a perfect location for radio astronomy.