Basically, moon bases need to be underground to prevent micrometeoroids from messing them up, and any bigger impact like this is going to wipe out anything we build, even underground.
All the more reason Earth is pretty awesome!
Fun fact: moon regolith is made of ~45% oxygen, so in a roundabout way digging underground is kind of like having an atmosphere.
or just build it on the earth facing side of the moon , then you have the entire thickness of the moon shielding you. But I believe some of the more interesting use cases for lunar bases require the far side, notably telescopes
The lunar near side is not shielded from impact craters in any significant way. Impactors can cross the earth's orbit and hit the near side of the moon just as easily as they can hit the far side.
The fact that the near side appears to have large areas with few craters, and the far side doesn't, is a result of many near-side craters having been erased by lava flows. It's not because it received fewer impacts.
Interesting, I did a quick search and you are right. I think I remembered the incorrect fact about the near side being shielded from 2001: A space Odyssey (the book). It actually has a few other outdated moon facts since it was written just before the Apollo missions
> basically what the moon is for us for most sizes of asteroid
Popular myth. "While the Moon does undeniably experience asteroid impacts, these impacts do not proportionally alleviate the impact risk to Earth; instead, both celestial bodies are subject to independent and interconnected bombardment" [1].
I like your reasoning about oxygen and would like to contribute the factoid that the molecular weight of CO₂ is over 72% oxygen. We really need to be spewing more of this stuff into the atmosphere to improve its oxygenation. Obviously O₂ would be best, but CO₂ is much more practical, and still gets us 72%.
All the more reason Earth is pretty awesome!
Fun fact: moon regolith is made of ~45% oxygen, so in a roundabout way digging underground is kind of like having an atmosphere.