On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Ryan Young wrote:

> Hi. I'm currently writing a paper for class about the pros and cons of
> putting a permanent, manned, international research facility on the
> moon. I'm only in my first semester of astronomy so my knowledge is
> limited. I know we could make MUCH better observations outside of the
> earth's atmosphere and our knowledge of the cosmos would help speed up
> future space travel. My question is what would you list as cons? I
> know as an astronomer, you may not have many cons, but it would sure
> help fill the gaps in my paper. Do you believe the cons are all
> economic and political?

Hi Ryan,

My first undergraduate advisor also liked the idea of a manned space
station on the moon. The construction would be much easier than the space
station, since the moon has gravity.

It is that gravity that would cause problems for astronomical observations
from the moon. The moon is constantly being bombarded by dust pulled in
by the moon's gravity, and these dust particles move fast enough that they
might severly damage a telescope's mirrors in a small amount of time. (How
long this would take is not very well known.) These micrometeoroids also
hit the Earth, but our atmosphere sweeps them up. The Hubble telescope is
protected from the meteors by a tube, but tubes are expensive for large
telescopes.

It would be best to place a telescope on the far side of the moon, so that
the Earth would not block any part of the sky. The Earth is very bright,
and so placing the telescope on the far face of the moon would preclude
needing to shield the telescope from the Earth (although the sun would be
a problem at times). However, one would then need satellites to relay data
from the telescope to Earth, and this adds to the cost.

The scientific staff on the moon would require supplies to be sent from
the Earth, which is expensive. And, if there was an emergency, help would
always be at least three days away.

Primarily, though, the main arguments against a moon base are the expense
(tens of billions of dollars) and a lack of political will. Also, the
benefits of a moon base are ambiguous and hard to sell. A spirit of
exploration does not survive the political culture of government,
unfortunately.

NASA has links to several reports on lunar exploration:
http://www.reston.com/nasa/development.html
Scientific American also has many pages on an in-depth report:
http://www.sciam.com/explorations/1998/0316moon/sweet.html
Goddard also has pages on a proposed lunar telescope:
http://snoopy.gsfc.nasa.gov/~lunartel/lunar1.html

Thanks for writing!

Sincerely,
Kurtis Williams

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