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Putting An Observatory On The Moon's 'Dark' Side
wytcld writes: "CNN reports astronomers are pushing for a radio telescope on the 'dark side of the moon' (do real astronomers call it the 'dark side,' when it gets plenty of light?). The proposal by Yuki David Takahashi is amazing mostly because a guy just starting work on his Master's is managing major press for it. Still, a nice dream."
Instead of say, the Hubble, they should call it "The Floyd"
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Remember, the money isn't spent in space -- it's spent right here on earth in order to get into space.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
The article says this is good because the moon would shield the telescope from your satellite TV and internet access interfering.
Of course, it doesn't mention how exactly they plan on communicating with it! Sure, radio from the earth / reflected off the earth doesn't interfere, but important signals are also blocked.
My server
Alternatively have 2 geostationary sats such that the observatory can transmit to one, and that one transmits to another one it can "see" which has line of sight to earth.
I'm sure there's a simpler solution, but i'm no space communications guru :)
The temperature is as low as 80K in polar regions (reduced thermal noise in detectors). - 40K inside permanently shadowed craters (coldest place in the Solar System!)
Heh, with temperatures like that they could REALLY overclock the PCs running these observatories!
This is a great idea if I can just get everyone in the country to pitch in 100 bucks (~25 billion) to do it... I think I pay enough taxes without paying for someone elses toys...
In particular, scientists involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project like the prospects of a lunar listening post. A major nuisance they face as they eavesdrop on the universe is the constant interference of radio emissions from Earth.
I'm sure it's a major nuisance to the Aliens too: "How can we continue with our search for intelligent life with all this crap coming from those idiots on Earth!?!?"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
A satellite in geostationary orbit still receives a lot of radio noise from Earth. That's sort of the point of GEO, after all. On the far side of the moon, though, there's this big hunk of radio absorbing rock between the antenna and Earth, which would allow the 'scope to pick up much fainter signals.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
"It's like we've always worn red sunglasses. When we take them off, we'll discover red flowers, red apples, red ladybugs, red flames."
Does anyone else think that part of this project has to do with research into "pharmaceuticals" in addition to the astronomy research? Sounds kind of "spacey" to me...
It's only software!
New Scientist has more info including a graphic of how the moon shields raido waves
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I believe the correct term is "Far Side" ie: the side that'salways turned away from the earth and is therefore (far)thest away.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Bzzzt. But thanks for playing. The Moon rotates at exactly the same rate as it revolves. Thus it always presents the same face to the Earth. That face might be lit (full moon) or might be dark (new moon), but it is the same always. That's why the Soviet pictures (Luna 3 -- see here for one telling) were such a big deal, as they were the first time any human had seen the "dark" (better, far) side.
The Moon is "tidally locked" to the Earth. Tidal forces have adjusted its rotation so that it presents the same face, due to the equality of rotation rates and revolution rates. So something on the Far Side would indeed be shielded from Earth-based transmissions.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
-Legion
Which half do you mean? The half of the time when the moon is in between the earth and the radio-telescope? Or do you mean the other half of the time, when the exact same situation exists?
Perhaps he means the half of the time when the earth is between the moon and the ground station. Not that this is a problem, just need a few more relay points.
do real astronomers call it the 'dark side,'...
:) Really though, what is it called? I doubt it is called the 'dark side', or the 'far side', although I may be wrong.
Of course they don't. That would be foolish and un-"real astronomer"-like. They call it the 'far side'.
If this proposal does go through though, and NASA begins research and development, hopefully it will reignite interest in the moon. We shouldn't dirty up the moon, but we should definately learn more about it.
~thebabelfish
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
No, it's called the "dark" side because an unfortunate linguistic misconception took root and is harder than weeds to pull out. The Moon rotates at exactly the same rate it revolves around the Earth. Tidal locking has accomplished this over billions of years. Now that the rates are equal, the Moon presents the same face to the Earth at all times.
A "new" moon occurs when the Moon is closer to the Sun than the Earth. Then all the light falls on the far side and none on the side facing the Earth. For a "full" moon, the Moon is further than the Earth and all of the sunlight falls on the face nearer the Earth. But in both cases we're seeing the same face.
See here for a good treatment.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Hmmm... Can you pass over a $100 dollar check to me, you wouldn't believe what I can accomplish if I only didn't have to work and pay for everyone elses cockeyed ideas...
Actually while you are at it, pay for my wife and kid too.
Thank you for your support
The dark side of the moon does face the earth half the time. Have you ever heard of a new moon?
Bzzzt. But thanks for playing. The Moon rotates at exactly the same rate as it revolves. Thus it always presents the same face to the Earth. That face might be lit (full moon) or might be dark (new moon), but it is the same always.
Uh, I think you lose the semantic battle, even though you don't state anything factually incorrect. Sometimes the "dark side" of the moon is the facing the earth. It is just that the "dark side" of the moon isn't always the same landscape. Sometimes the Sea of Tranquillity is on the dark side, sometimes it's on the light side, but it's always on the side facing Earth.
Of course, back to the relevance of the original post, as far as radio noise goes, the side on the far side from the Earth is the dark side.
-Rob
The siderial month, the true period of the revolution of the mon around the earth is 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and the period of axial rotation of the moon is 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes.
Thus the same side of the moon is always facing the earth.
Actually, since the moon 'woobles' a bit (libration) we can actually see about 59% of the moons surface, and 41% remains permanently hidden from view from the earth's surface.
Hence the terms 'far side' and 'dark side' of the moon.
Steve M
The last time I checked, the moon rotated.
Correct. Once per orbit.
If i am incorrect about this, please Xplain why.
Look at it this way -- when was the last time you looked up at the Moon and saw the far side?
-- Alastair
More interesting would be an observatory headed for a black hole...I'd volunteer.
Yep a sure winner.
Steve M
L1 is between Earth and Moon, L2 is on the other side. Those positions are neutral, but unstable; however satellites can been kept in "halo" orbits around such unstable points for a long time with only relatively small fuel expenditure to keep them in the right position.
L1 and L2 are about 60,000 km above the lunar surface, if I recall correctly, so somewhat further away than geo-synchronous orbits from Earth, but they would serve a similar purpose for lunar communications. L2 is the most logical for communicating with a far side observatory; laying several thousand km of cable that has to withstand 400 degree temperature swings could get rather expensive.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Unfortunately your post is situated between two notable posts of the scholar and poet "Klerck", at least in the view im in, and you're using the Anonymous Coward ID, therefore im afraid very few will notice your post, as they would be distracted by the awesome and stunning magnitude of his thought process.
:P
The space shuttle can only reach a maximum altitude of 600 miles. This is with no additional weight and isnt even close to the clarke/GEO orbit, at 22,500 FT. Anything higher that the shuttle carries has to be launched by the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) mechanism you often see satellites spinning out of. The external tank and SRB's, at 154 FT and 116 FT respectively, are dwarfed by the 373 FT tall SaturnV stack that was used to get the spacecraft far enough out that the S4-B could begin its translunar injection. The space shuttle's current EFT cannot be refueled.
In short, you'd have to dust off the Saturn-V diagrams. Since the government would be paying more than likely, this step alone could cost millions.
Of course, we would want/need to revise a little. Computer weight, increased efficency in fuel, etc.. Chalk up a couple extra hundred mill..
Providing you successfully launch materials into space and onto the surface of the moon. You still need to get assembly teams up - and staff. You could use the same launch system.. But you'd need a completely different capsule design.
Apollo designs just wouldnt cut it. For one, you need seating for more than 3. Granted the space savings of the computer (which was only 1 SQ FT in the original apollo.. dont ask me about that one.) could assist marginally.. a soft cockpit also.. but this theoretical new launch system would likely have the power to launch human weight simply, if its hauling tons and tons of building materials to the moon.
You can see where this is going, and i would love to continue this discussion, unfortunately, my computer is cursed and won't stay up for more than a few minutes at a time. I've had to write this post in notepad.
Don't get me wrong. I'm 150% for space exploration. I think the visions of humanity have become severly limited - the age of wonder has gone the way of Camelot. I'd be on the first moonshot, if i could. I guess they need sysadmins on the moon. I just don't think the US, especially under the republicans, is going to do the space thing much. Remember - Republican translates into "Warmonger, rich oil tycoon" in politiceese - Very little room in dubya's brain for science. Its not christian, anyway. The world still rests atop a stack of giant tortoises. err, wait.. thats hindu.
And before anyone decides to begin a diatribe on the instability of windows, its not windows - its my computer itself. 1)
Linux locks, too, 2) The computer HANGS, the OS doesn't crash.
Ammendment to above comment: The shuttle's highest launch to date was the HST launch to my opinion, which was in the 300-400 MI LEO.
Correction: I'm stupidtired.
Change:
22,500 FT
to
22,500 MI in reference to the clarke orbit.
The only problem is, that while an observator on the far/darkside of the moon has a lot of benifits, we can't get there. While NASA could go to the moon in 1969, they don't have a single rocket to do the same now and radio telescopes are huge, less gravity will help, but you still need a huge capture area to hear signals from 100/1000/10000 lightyears away. The moon missions only required the transport of 3 people and life suport (and dune buggy), but the requirements of an serious observatory would be much greater requirements. The article doesn't mention if there is expected to be a support staff or if this would be purely robitic. There is a further problem in that they want it place it on the far/dark side of the moon, to avoid radio interference, (if this was built an optical telescope seems like a simple addition), so how do you get the information back to earth, the cabling required to get the signals back to the near/(bright?) side of the moon would be huge, or maybe you orbit a sattilite for relay purposes, but in anycase this is still a huge undertaking. Don't get me wrong I'd love to see this but this would cost Billions and Billions (said with carl sagan voice) and take 20-30 years, and as the US gov has canned SETI and they were make to look like fools in Contact I can't see them too keen on this.
Your post needs a little clarifying, because this sentence is a bit ambiguous. A new moon occurs when the Moon is closer to the Sun than the Earth is to the Sun, that is, when the Moon is roughly between the Earth and the Sun.
New MoonEarth---Moon-------------Sun
Full Moon
Moon---Earth--------------------Sun
Someone reading your post might get the impression that the Moon manages to move such that the distance from the Moon to the Sun is less than the distance from the Moon to the Earth, and there's already too many people who are confused about astronomy posting to this article.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Although this appears to be a neat idea. I can't help but get shivers every time I see someone want to put something up there. I guess I like the relatively unspoiled view (no I don't have a telescope) that we have. The Earth is not so lonely and we have thousands of satellites kicking around in orbit.
Wouldn't it make more sense to push for Mars? It's further away from the sun (1.52 AU as opposed to the moon 1 AU), has relatively little atmosphere (mind you there are the dust storms but we're talking radio here), and is the next likely place we humans could go for off-planet colonization. It would be a great precursor to humans coming over... and with an established communication network because of this and possibly other missions, it could encourage private industry to help fund exploration. I would imagine the cost could be the biggest factor that would prevent Mars from being the candidate... damn.. I love our mostly pristine Moon!
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
I'm going to contribute to the rampant correction of misconceptions here. (have to do my part)
THERE IS NO PERMANENT DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
There are permanent near and far sides to the moon, as viewed from Earth. The same side of the Moon is always pointed toward the Earth. The "dark" side of the Moon is whichever side of the Moon is pointed away from the Sun at the time.
The fact that the Moon does not rotate relative to the Earth is the whole point of putting a radio observatory on the far side of the Moon. Astronomers want the Moon between their radio telescopes and the radio noise of human civilization so they can observe in peace.
Other posters have explained how one could communicate with such a facility, given that it's on the far side of the Moon, so I'm not going to go into that.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Dang. I usually pride myself on being semantically precise, but you definitely caught me here. I should have said "when the Moon is closer to the Sun than the Earth is". Of course even that could be improved: "... when the Sun, Mooon, and Earth are aligned, with the Moon between the other two."
Mea culpa.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Good idea except for a couple of significant problems. Number 1 is the meteor problem, during the 2 wks in which the moon leads the earth through space, the combined gravational forces of the moon and earth significantly increase the probability of a meteor striking the telescope system if it where built on the far side. Take a look at some of the photos NASA has from the far side, the near side is silky smooth compared to the far side. The moon acts as a meteor shield for the earth,this plus our atmosphere are the main reasons why the earth's surface isn't cratered like the moons surface. The second major problem is that over half the time the telescope would be pointed at or at least exposed to the sun which in it self is a significant source of rfi. If you had the logitical problems covered you still would be hard pressed to have this very expensive instrument usable more then 1 wk. out of 4 wks. If anyone is actually serious about this concept, it would be much more feasible to place a radio telescope device with massive rfi shielding from the earth's noise out in deep space.The idea of a radio telescope on the moon's far side is not new and neither are the practicalities. The cheap and dirty solution is to ask everyone to turn off the power for a few hours. I hope this guy is not trying for a degree in astrophysics, he hasn't done his home work if he is.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls - but they're so damn cute sometimes. :) So hear goes:
It is cold in space.
Unfortunately, vacuum is an excellent insulator. It's very difficult to dissipate heat in space.
Ever see pictures of the shuttle in orbit with it's doors closed? No - the reason is that the insides of the doors contain giant radiators just to dissipate the heat generated by the people and equipment. They MUST keep them open at all times to dump waste heat.
...that damn bright object in the sky that is blacking out all the good things too look at. Thanks to it there is one good day a month, compounded by clouds appearing 85% of the time leaving one good month for observing.
That month being the said coldest day of the year, usually somewhere in the low single digits, then the wind helps it to double digit negatives.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
L4 and L5. Put the communications satellite in the L4 or L5 Earth-moon Lagrange point. These are the stable points. While they won't "view" the exact center of the far side disk, if the observatory is built, say, 45 degrees back from that center, a satellite can view it from L4 or L5. The observatory would still be blocked from Earth noise by a huge mass of the moon, but it would be able to see L4 or L5 (which one depending on which way it was positioned) just above the horizon all the time. And with 3 or 4 active links to it on the Earth, continuous contact could be maintained. While a satellite there would actually be in order around a virtual point, it could be a small orbit, allowing for a fixed antenna at the observatory, and potentially very high bandwidth continuous communications.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Imagining a satellite around a moon around a planet around a sun is a little out there.
Tough to imagine, eh? How about visualizing something closer to home--an electron in your wristwatch's second hand.
It's orbiting the nucleus of an iron atom,
which every 60 seconds circles the axis of your wristwatch,
which every 24 hours circles the axis of the Earth,
which every 365.242 days orbits the Sun,
which every 200 million years orbits the center of the Galaxy,
which every 150 billion years or so orbits the center of the Local Group,
which every few trillion years orbits the center of the Virgo supercluster.
I suppose those last two are somewhat optimistic predictions, especially considering that I have no first-hand knowledge of your wristwatch.
The advantages are plain too... you get an orbit of 28 days, and it passes over points of the earth roughly once a day (quite a slow orbit)
But the most important aspect would be observations during a lunar eclipse.
Not to mention the fact that transmitting data back to earth would be easier.
Some people have pointed out that sending data back to earth would be costly, since transmission from the Dark Side is tricky.
But what about deploying a relay satelite orbiting around the moon? As another post sugested, this is possible. (Although the life expectancy may only be about 20 years...)
I'm not an astrophysisist. Don't shoot the idiot.
;)
ME.
A syncronus orbit on the moon would have a additive one direction pull on the satelite steadly pulling it out of position. Check the path of the orbit of anything placed in a stationary orbit over anyplace on the moon except directly between the moon and earth, or directly over the far side of the moon. A handy spot "beside" the moon where the earth and farside of the moon can communicate in a stationary orbit will not stay put for long.
The accelerating force is in one direction for a very long period of time. Earth satelites do not have this problem as the lunar gravity pulls for a relatively short period of time in one direction and shifts in the other direction for the same period of time as the moon orbits. The satelites wobble a little just like the ocean tides come and go. A moon satelite will get pulled and keep going... it won't wobble just a little. It will move until it reached the other side (East to West) and then it will come back (West to East). True it will take years to get a cycle complete, but the thing will not stay stationary.
The truth shall set you free!
The main site doesn't say a word about cost, and it casually postulates robotic construction, which is not a currently deployed technology even on Earth. It seems to be ivory-tower science. The CNN and New Scientist pieces just say "billions."
Is there any reason to think that this thing could actually be built for a reasonable cost? Has anyone even tried to come up with a real estimate? Bear in mind how low the estimates have been for our most recent space construction. Off the top of my head I wouldn't be surprised to see a real cost in the hundreds of billions, between dozens of Saturn V launches and the development of entirely new technologies like lunar robotic construction.
Tim
Uh... this is very wrong, but not obviously so I suppose the moderators can be forgiven. The reason for the cratering difference between the near and far sides of the Moon is ENTIRELY due to the fact that the near side is a slightly younger surface than the far side. You know all those dark "mare" areas you see on the near side? There are essentially none on the far side; what those are are lava flows dating back generally 3+ billion years, filling large basins created by giant impacts that mostly date back 3.9 billion years or more. Those mare lava flows covered over all the old craters, giving a somewhat smoother surface (by the way, if you look through a telescope at the Moon any time, near the terminator, you wouldn't ever again call it "silky smooth", anywhere).
In any case, the Moon does NOT act as a meteor shield for the Earth, in any significant way: the Moon's mass is only a little over 1% of that of Earth, it's cross-sectional area around 10%, and the Earth-Moon distance is so relatively huge that the chance of anything destined to hit the Moon also coming in a direction that it would have hit the Earth if the Moon wasn't there is somewhere around the 0.1% level - i.e. 99.9% of the meteors that hit the Moon wouldn't have gone anywhere near Earth anyway; and generally the Earth will receive about 10 times as many meteor hits as the Moon does, so the Moon shields a miniscule 0.01% or so of the ones that do hit.
Ok, so much for that theory. What about the rest of the post? Half the time the telescope would be unusable? That's sort of typical of telescopes actually - have you ever tried looking at the stars in daytime? In any case, one of the proposals mentioned was actually a polar observatory, in one of the craters that never receives any sunlight in the amazingly deep south pole basin. These are also shielded from Earth, and would be close to ideal 100% of the time - except they can only look south relative to our orbit around the sun, so somewhat over half the sky would be missing...
So it would be much more feasible to "place a radio telescope device with massive rfi shielding from the earth's noise out in deep space"? First consider the proposed size of these telescopes is huge - several km across! How do you propose to launch such a huge structure (the most massive parts of a lunar telescope would be constructed from in situ materials, and thus not require any launch from Earth)? How do you propose to launch the immensely more massive shielding? We're talking billions of tons here, when it costs $10,000 to launch a pound in the US these days?! Why is it that any time someone talks about the Moon these days it's a ridiculous proposal, but then the same people come up with immensely more hare-brained and expensive schemes!!!
"ask everyone to turn off the power for a few hours"!? I'm sure a few hours a year of telescope time (and remember they're dedicating some sort of Arecibo or bigger-size telescope to this) will really satisfy the astronomers... and what sort of totalitarian political system do you think the world would need to actually get a request like that followed?
Oh well, just had to respond to the +5 on the post...
Energy: time to change the picture.
(snort) We've only had 50-75 years of punching out crap (and hell, maybe aliens *like* I Love Lucy). That's hardly enough time for electromagnetic radiation to annoy aliens. By the time they notice us, if anyone does, we'll probably have converted almost entirely to cable or some other futuristic entertainment deployment technology.
I was half-asleep when writing that - I corrected the post as soon as i had seen the error.
Can anyone speculate how easy it would be to sustain a stable orbit around the moon for long periods of time?
There are 5 lagrange points in a two-body system such as earth-moon. The L2 point behind the moon is unstable, but a very small amount of station-keeping thrust every now and then would keep a relay satellite there.
The moon obscures L2 from earth. But you could do a second bounce off a satellite at L4 or L5. Those are 1/6th of the way around the orbit behind and ahead of the moon and are stable second order - a satellite drifts off the potential peak but then ends up in a stable orbit around it.
See an explanation here
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Timothy: (do real astronomers call it the 'dark side,' when it gets plenty of light?)
...
brassman: If you're a RADIO astronomer, yes...the far side would be the dark side as far as you're concerned. The amount of radio crap we're spewing
Also: The far side doesn't get light or solar radio noise reflected from the earth, while the near side sees the earth illuminated (at the nearest point: first quarter (half-lit) through full to last quarter) any time the sun is down.
Put two observatories a bit over the horizon from Earth on opposite sides and you get nearly continuous observation of the half-sky opposite the sun without interference from either the sun or the earth.
Don't put one EXACTLY opposite the earth: There's a diffuse "hot spot" of signal that diffracted around the moon there - diffuse because the moon isn't a sphere smooth down to radio or light wavelengths.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In short, you'd have to dust off the Saturn-V diagrams.
I like reading the sci.space.* newsgroups on USENET. Henry Spencer has discussed the idea of building more Saturn V rockets.
The problem is that blueprints only take you so far; there is a lot of know-how that was distributed among the various contractors who built the various pieces. All that know-how is irretrieveably lost. No one ever wrote down the special heat-treating process that made this part here strong enough, no one ever wrote down the custom jig used to machine that part there, etc.
So you really cannot build a Saturn V now. You would be starting all over from a design. And, says Henry Spencer, there is no reason to start all over from the Saturn V design; you would do just as well, or better, to start with a fresh design that made modern assumptions (like modern computers).
By the way, for similar reasons, you really cannot build a Space Shuttle orbiter now either. We already have as many orbiters as we will ever have; let's just hope no more of them explode.
If we ever do want to build a heavy-lift launcher, the correct way to do it is to announce that the US government will pay $X dollars per each heavy payload launched into space, and will commit to launching Y payloads. Then stand back and let the market work. NASA, as presently constructed, cannot pull off projects like building a new heavy-lift vehicle, at least not without spending an insane amount of money and running far over schedule.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Actually, you can orbit the Moon. If you stay in a low enough orbit (less than a few 1000 km's) the
gravitational perturbation due to the Earth is small. HOWEVER, there is another source of gravitational
perturbation that will cause orbits to change in a few months: large concetrations of dense rock called
"mascons" (for "mass concentrations") formed from early lava flows. These have a large enough effect that
e.g. satellites left in lunar orbit during the Apollo program decayed and impacted the Moon within a year, as
I recall.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
They are stable, but wide. The stability is not that stuff falls inward, but that objects would orbit around the point. But, yes, there is a risk that crap can accumulate there. But astronomers have looked and found nothing more than some dust in the Earth-Moon L4/5 points. The Sun-Jupiter and Sun-Saturn L4/5 points do have some big rocks in there.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Just think - if we hadn't been cursed with this weird coincidence (rotation period == orbital period) our scientists and philosophers might have cottoned on to the laws of orbital motion and the sphericity (?) of the Moon and Earth millennia ago.
It's not a weird coincidence. Because the Moon is so big and so close (relative to most planet/moon relations), tidal forces will affect it's rotational period until it is in sync with the orbital period. To not be tidelocked, the Moon would have to be so far away that it's unlikely that the rotation would be visible to the naked eye...
No. You go back to the original lunar mission plans (earth orbit assembly), from back before political considerations turned it into "Get two guys there the fastest way possible. And make this the first exploratory voyage in history with zero fatalities."
Keep in mind that electronics we have now is immensely better than it was during the Apollo missions. You can do things with robots that they were scared to try with or without live crews in 1968. The following plan takes a decade of development work, but none of the pieces are too big, and there will be other applications for the technology created:
You use the shuttle to haul pieces of the mission ships into orbit. You don't actually need a space station, just an area where the shuttles bring the pieces and shuttle crews bolt them together. I think one shuttle brings up an orbital transfer robot "tug", the next one brings up a load of communication satellites. The tug has some very efficient low-thrust drive. The tug first takes the comsats out and drops them off in lunar orbit, so we have the needed com relays to the far side.
The tug returns, and meets one to three more shuttles with a disposable robot lunar lander, payload, and fuel. After the pieces are bolted together, the tug takes the lander out to lunar orbit, drops it, and returns for the next piece. The lander lands (of course). Subsequent landers home in on the first piece.
You better have two tugs, and you will need some spares of the landers and telescope sections, because some units will malfunction. But eventually all the pieces of the scope are landed on the moon, and you now know the transportation there is trustworthy. So now you send your man-rated lander out on one tug, with the second one following just in case. The crew lands, bolts things together, and comes home.
Alternately, send out some robot cranes, robot wrenches, etc., and have the final assembly done by robots. It will be slow and rather expensive, but maybe cheaper than sending men. And when you get done, you know how to make robots to tackle the biggest jobs...