Scientists Plan For Astronomical Observations On The Moon

BALTIMORE—Now that scientists have developed a blueprint
for how the next generation of astronauts will whisk back to
the Moon, it's time to figure out what to do when they get
there and why.

This week at a workshop entitled "Astrophysics Enabled by
the Return to the Moon" at the Space Telescope Science
Institute here, astrophysicists are discussing such Moon plans,
including the idea of setting up telescopes on the lunar surface.
...
Another issue is levitated dust, which occurs when the Sun's
energy cause dust grains to become electrically charged.
"I think we need to continue to evaluate whether the Moon is
usable for astronomy or not," said Paul Spudis of the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel,
Maryland.
"And finally we need to fill in the missing pieces of knowledge
and specifically we need to characterize this dust levitation
and find out—does this occur and what the real magnitude of
the effect is."


SOURCE:
Space.com

This was an interesting article to read for me, and is in general
very interesting to many people in my opinion.

I'm glad to see that we're actually thinking about what we're
going to do when we've gone back and set up shop, rather than
decide on the fly.


Comments, Opinions?

Personally I would like to see the moon remain absolutely untouched and in its beautiful, natural form as it is now. Certainly there is definite scope for scientific study, but it should be the exception, not the norm. All this talk of moon bases and telescopes makes me feel quite sad really.

Speaking of the proposed telescope, perhaps it would be a better idea to develop a successor to Hubble that would simply orbit in a similar fashion, rather than having to come up with solutions to the inevitable problems that would be faced with a moon-based device. It makes not only ecological but also economical sense to me, but perhaps that would be too simple for government to comprehend huh?

Originally posted by hannibal the cannibal
Personally I would like to see the moon remain absolutely untouched and in its beautiful, natural form as it is now. Certainly there is definite scope for scientific study, but it should be the exception, not the norm. All this talk of moon bases and telescopes makes me feel quite sad really.

Well it is the closest object to us, so it's sort of has to be the
first place we go, personally unless there's a place with life,
and us being there would destroy it, I think we shouyld go
and colonize everywhere.

Speaking of the proposed telescope, perhaps it would be a better idea to develop a successor to Hubble that would simply orbit in a similar fashion, rather than having to come up with solutions to the inevitable problems that would be faced with a moon-based device. It makes not only ecological but also economical sense to me, but perhaps that would be too simple for government to comprehend huh?

The hubble already has a replacement, the James Webb telescope,
plus many other telescopes that wil be put in orbit in the next two
decades.

The reason for the moon is because it ca'nt be an orbiting telescope,
and it would'nt work here on Earth because of the armosphere.

Speaking of the proposed telescope, perhaps it would be a better idea to develop a successor to Hubble that would simply orbit in a similar fashion, rather than having to come up with solutions to the inevitable problems that would be faced with a moon-based device. It makes not only ecological but also economical sense to me, but perhaps that would be too simple for government to comprehend huh?

The only problem with orbital telescopes is that they are limited in size and weight. They just have the advantage of not having to view things through the atmosphere. This is why a telescope on the Moon would be great. It could be as large as you can afford to make it and it won't have to deal with an atmosphere either. One could produce images that would make Hubble's look bad by comparison.

I'm with iori in that I think we should colonies everything we can unless there is existing life there that we might do harm to. I think it's inevitable that we'll start spreading out through the solar system and possibly to other star systems (assuming we don't do something stupid to ourselves before then).