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."

Comments

We should land

[PlayCleverFully]

Where we can find out the most info. not about water..

It is everyone's dream to find water here or there, but its a waste of BILLIONS if thats what you are up there looking for.

There are much better things to spend the money on, like Windows Vista, which is RUMORed to be going on shelves for $500 a POP.

an unpopular opinion

[Claire-plus-plus]

I know my opinion will never be popular here, it is a place for nerds and all. However, I don't think we should go to the moon at all. I think we should get our house in order first. We are poluting ourselves out of house and home, we are running out of viable resources and we are constantly killing each other. There are far more useful ways to use our scientific resources. In this time of global warming and pollution I don't like the idea of rockets on useless missions wasting our resources and polluting our atmosphere. Maybe instead of a space program what we need is to spend some resources trying to find viable alternative sources of energy. Maybe instead of NASA the US government could spend all that money on a sustainability research agency. I am a scientist and a geek but I will never understand why going to the moon is so important. Oh, and before you say "there are resources on the moon we can use to alleviate our resource lack", there is no fuel on the moon for cars... there is nothing on the moon that we can't get here. Additionally, with our current technology, it would use more resources to get stuff here from the moon than it is worth. I do not say we should never go to the moon, or further, but clean up our mess first. Who goes on holiday when their house is a mess eh?