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Should We Land on the Moon's Poles or Equator?
Cujo writes "There is at present a lively controversy about sites for a crewed lunar landing. Advocates for landing near the poles, possibly on a mountain, point out the advantages of much higher sunlight availability and possible water resources in nearby cold traps. However, there may be more interesting geology and better mineral resources near the better-explored equator. NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture report lays out some of the tradeoffs."
Redundancy is always key and it is more efficient to built two highly probably successes than one extremely probably success.
It's the most earthlike planet in the solar system barring earth, and it appears to have formerly supported an atmosphere and liquid water, meaning it could possibly do so again. It's the only planet in the solar system that we could have a reasonable expectation of terraforming on a reasonable timescale. I'd say that's the long-long-long-term purpose.
On a shorter timescale, we'll certainly learn a lot, and a lot of it will be stuff we can't learn on the moon. However, we need to step up operations on both of them. What we learn from comparing similar surveys of three planets (or at least, two planets and a moon) will tell us a lot more than what we'll learn looking at two, and it won't be linear, because of the added basis for comparison.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The polar circumfrence of the moon is ony about 3500 km, so any point from the equator to either pole is approximately a quarter of that, 875 km. The original lunar rovers used in the first lunar exploration had a top speed of just under 13 km/hr and very limited ranges, so they would obviously be unsuited to take a "lunar road trip." But it seems to me that we could build a vehicle that was more like a "lunar RV" that could make the trip. Say we improve rover speed to a modest 45 km/hr and assume we can't take a perfectly direct course to a pole...call it 900 km. So it would take 20 hours in your VW lunar rover. As long as they pack enough ganja and doritos, they should be fine. It seems that with the low gravity and cloudless skies, that kind of performance could be achieved with solar power, perhaps boosted by some chemical propulsion. It would have to be capable of carrying enough oxygen for the crew to survive for several days, but it seems like this would be possible.
Screw the observatory.
put a radio telescope array or use a nuke to carve out a crater that makes arecibo look like a childs toy.
Imagine the sensitivity and possibilities with a dish the size of France unencumbered by the twits on the planet broadcasting at massive wattage AND having a nice big RF sink to your back between you and the noisy planet.
That would rock, be relatively easy compared to a regular observatory and probably only take very few launches to get all the parts on location.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While we are talking about the moon, I can understand and see the scientific payoffs of sending people back to the moon, but I am much less clear on the whole Mars thing.
Although science is a nice side-benefit, the main reason for going to the Moon this time around is to learn how to live there and make use of the local resources, as a step towards making humanity a space-faring species.