Replace Arecibo scope, backside of Luna

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/replace-the-arecibo-radio-telescope-with-one-on-the-moon-s-far-side/ar-BB1c5qGJ?ocid=msedgntp

This would certainly be the best place for a radio telescope since Earth radio noise would have to penetrate a few thousand miles of the moon.
So it would be about the quietest place anywhere near Earth to have a radio telescope.
Besides that, the structure could be strung across craters already there to put up the towers needed to support the actual receive units.
And there would be what, 1/6th of Earth gravity so the whole thing would be a LOT easier to work on, except for the pesky part you have to drive a quarter million miles to get there🙂

I've heard space "programs" for lack of a better terminology...can make adjustments and sometimes repairs without humans.
So how could earth send new data to this device if the moon blocks the signal?
How would we get any info back to us?
Do signals go right through the moon? Or would the moon need a satellite?

@sonhouse said
except for the pesky part you have to drive a quarter million miles to get there

That problem can be made much less problematic by sending AI robots their about as smart as humans instead of humans so to do the same job as those humans but without the need for life-support and the need to eat or sleep etc. But now that brings us to the pesky part of inventing AI robots about as smart as humans ...
I hope one day to solve that problem with my AI research.

@Cheesemaster
How they do that RIGHT NOW, is for instance, the Chinese probe on the back side of the moon, would be useless without the ability to communicate with Earth, so they have a sat that goes around the lunar equator and THAT communicates with the probe, records the latest data set and when it gets around to LOS with Earth, it squirts the data. Nice thing about Lunar sats is the gravity at about 1/6th of Earth means the orbital velocity is that much lower than Earth and that means the sat will be in LOS (Line Of Sight) of earth 6 times longer than a comparable sat around Earth which would have only about 45 or so minutes depending on altitude.
Of course we have sats 22,000 miles up, geosynchronous orbits that means it always stays in one place directly above a certain point on Earth so a TV or data sat can have ground stations that don't need to move around much to get data lock.

That would not work very will on the moon, I guess you could put one in an orbit that is near the terminator where it could have LOS to both the Chinese rover on the backside but it would be tricky finding the right altitude and the problem there is if the orbit is not high enough the moon itself would shadow the signals coming and going to the rover so that probably would not work.
You can't pick the altitude if you want geosync orbit, or in this case Lunasync orbit.
Because the gravity of the moon is about 1/6 Earth, the lunasync orbit would be a lot closer to the lunar surface so I imagine the view would be blocked where you could only use that sat if you were near the terminator because say 90 degrees away from the sat would most likely put the moon in the way so there would be no LOS.
So they just use a sat that has some altitude, not lunarsync but like I said, picks up the data when it is floating around the backside and is in LOS.

So it is a technical challenge but it can and IS being done as we speak by the Chinese.

They have taken photos of the rover and vicinity, not sure what they call it but you can google Chinese lunar backside rover or some such.

I'll see if I can find a link.

Well that took at LEAST one minute🙂

https://www.space.com/china-far-side-moon-rover-strange-substance.html

It is called Yuto-2.

I know about this stuff because for one thing I was an Apollo technician, Apollo Tracking and Timing was my job before Nixon killed the whole program.

I have done a lot of microwave tower work, one on Andros Island in the Bahamas where there is a British submarine base I worked at, AUTEC, a very interesting place to work and they flew me down in helicopter to the microwave tower which was 200 feet tall and the footprint of a house, huge! And the wind on top actually moved the whole top a few inches which surprised me the first time I was assigned the job of flying downsite to do maintenance.
AUTEC stands for Atlantic Underwater TEst Center. Like I said, VERY interesting place to work.

Another job I did for a few years was in Thailand, at NKP airforce base, used to be US but we gave it back to the Thais so it is theirs now, about 400 miles north of Bankok.
I worked on a now obsolete tech called Space diversity Troposcatter, TWO microwave dishes shooting RF next to each other about 10 meters (30 odd feet) apart and that allowed very reliable microwave communications out to a few hundred miles. A single dish has too many dropouts to be used reliably for communications, but 2 side by side fixes that.

I also have the top level amateur radio license called 'amateur extra class
which gives me more bandwidth to talk on.

One contact I remember to this day: I threw a wire out my second story window, maybe 20 feet long and on 20 meters (14 megahertz) back when there was a nice bunch of sunspots which makes for world wide communications, I talked to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, that was thrilling. I suggested a chess game which I knew they played in the dark time, months of no sunlight. But the signal died out before I could get one going.

Very complicated 🤔

Would you go to mars if they said you wouldn't be coming back?

I would.

I have flown on 3 planes and when they take off and you feel that small force that pushes you into the back of the seat I pretend I am a space shuttle pilot who is on a mission to save the world.
(Not joking)

@Cheesemaster
I would probably not go under those circumstances. For them to say that indicates to me they have not got it together technologically speaking because that would mean the rockets are not powerful enough to send return fuel and such.
If that turns out the only way to do it and they were setting up an actual independent colony, maybe I would go but I don't think they are planning that since it would take multiple trips with rockets to send all the gadgets and such for living and working, like drilling machines which would be vital to dig out dirt to convert to soil and the domes that would probably have to be built with some giant kind of 3D printer but even with that you would have to have tons of plastic or whatever to feed the printer so it could make domes for living.
But I don't think they would do that because there is no planet wide magnetic field which saves us on Earth from all the solar storms flung out of the sun, we are saved from that by our Earth's magnetic field.
No field, no protection from the ravages of the sun.

Sorry to be long winded.

So the gist of all that is the first folks there would have to have underground living quarters so the ground itself, whatever depth it would take, ten feet? whatever depth it would take to protect the colonists from solar storms, that would be where they would be living at least to start.

Anyway, all that said, I would think they could ship people back if they had the tech to ship to mars all the machinery it would take to build a real colony.

But the first trips will certainly not be with colonization in mind because we are just not there with powerful rockets to do even that.

So my guess is NASA or ESA or the Russian or Chinese version of NASA would allow a one way trip, at least that would be my take.

So I think it would be a moot point, it just would not happen that way.

The force you feel when taking off is acceleration force which if you know relativity, that force cannot be figured out to be either from being on the surface of a planet like we are now, that force is an acceleration force also and relativity says you can't tell the difference, like if you are on Earth inside a spacecraft before it takes off, you weigh say 100 Kg, my weight actually, 220 pounds, So if you take off the typical G force is about 3 g's, a lot more then you would feel from a plane takeoff.

So you get into space and say you were asleep during take off and there was some advance propulsion that could accelerate at one G, and you wake up and as far as you are concerned you weigh 220 pounds.
So there would be no way of you to be able to tell you are not just back on Earth because of what is called the 'equivalence effect' which is if you are inside a closed room and you are in fact in a spacecraft accelerating at the same G force you feel on Earth, there is no instrument you could use to differentiate between you being just stuck on the ground while you are inside the craft and being out in space accelerating at one G.

Why not colonize the moon first for practice and experimentation?

Learn to crawl before you try to walk theory.

@Cheesemaster
Mars is more Earthlike, some kind of atmosphere, we can't breathe but it used to have liquid water which implies it used to have an atmosphere thick enough to allow liquid water to exist on the surface and that means there was probably life of some kind and maybe life right now buried in the dirt of Mars.
Luna has nothing and never did. It was created, or so scientists say, from a collision of a Mars size planet whacking into Earth early on and the collision and the ejecta going into space that made the moon would never have been able to have life on it since it would have been rock at 2000 degrees or so and no life could get a start with those conditions.
So Mars is where we want to go for many reasons over the Moon.

That said, there recently was found ice at the poles in craters that never get sunlight which would quickly evaporate liquid water so there is enough water on Luna to fill the great lakes or close anyway, which means you get drinking water, you get to split the water with electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen which can be used for breathing and for rocket fuel, a win win situation all around.
But there would never be life found on the moon, at least we have a chance on Mars.

@Duchess64
He wasn't the only one, I read about He3 on the moon a decade ago.

@sonhouse said
@Duchess64
He wasn't the only one, I read about He3 on the moon a decade ago.

according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Extraterrestrial_mining):

A number of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986,[63] have proposed to explore the Moon, mine lunar regolith and use the helium-3 for fusion.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Sadly enough they give no source for the initial publication. Do you have one?

@Duchess64
You said you did so why can't you come up with at least a synopsis?