Wheres the Moon base going to go.

[ryan]

Hey guys, i was printing out maps of the moon for my moon watch tonight, and i was wondering where will NASA put there Moon base when they create it? will they keep it safe and put it in the Sea of Tranquility, or will they be daring and build it in Hadley-Rille, Will they keep geoligy in mind, or will they build it for themselves, te outcome will be intresting to see, when NASA finally decides.

 

[n0mad23]

The south pole.

Here's some nice images of why: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html

 

[ryan]

The south pole.

Here's some nice images of why: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html

But wouldnt they have to take in concideration, the Earth being in the right place so the astronauts can talk to people back on the ground, and also light, the amount of light on the base.

 

[gimp1992]

I hope they return to finish the Apollo missions and land at Marius Hills or Tycho or Copernicus. They had been chosin for a reason and I think that they still have valuable scientific knowledge to discover. What a shame it was that they did not fly the last misions, it would only have cost them a few dollars more. Instead we have the Saturn V rockets to look at as a testement to mankinds short attension span.

 

[razgriz31m]

far side of the moon.,

 

[n0mad23]

But wouldnt they have to take in concideration, the Earth being in the right place so the astronauts can talk to people back on the ground, and also light, the amount of light on the base.

All of your reasons listed here are solved by a South Pole location. Malapert Mountain is in sunlight more often than not. Because of the Moon's rotation, points of the mountain are visible to Earth most of the time. This mountain is something like 20,000 ft. high!

And if there's trapped water ice anywhere, it'll be found in the craters here. Some have not had sunlight for billions of years.

 

[Andy44]

The other big question is delta-V requirements and transfer windows.

A south pole base implies that the CSM will be in a polar orbit, which means you can't just take off from the base and come home whenever you want. There will be a trans-Earth transfer window about once every two weeks, a few days long. How long depends on how much delta-V (ie. fuel) the CSM has aboard.

There may be other ways of dealing with this, such as having a second CSM in a different polar orbit plane standing by, or giving the CSM enough delta-V to just deal with it, we'll see.

All this assumes there actually will be a base.