Several of my family members are out looking at the moon. I need to take a shower. Or shake a tower, or something.
Our tower on the moon elevates the solar collector to the point where it is always bathed in sunlight. — except during an eclipse.
That is the reason to locate at the Lunar Pole. With twenty-four hour sunlight, one has sufficient power to operate an extensive base. Other than the equipment which is intended to monitor or act on the lunar surface, everything is underground.
Our hydroponics tunnels have all been excavated, but only half are growing plants. The problem is a lack of sufficient water. We suppliment our present supply with ice found in polar craters, but that is a rather tedious process. One has to be careful not to lose the ice to sublimation.
The rest of it comes from cooking it out of lunar ores. As the water quantity increases, our capacity to welcome human visitors back to the moon will increase. Soon we will have the capability to support a full-time crew of from twelve to twenty.
Having people available at close range will speed up construction projects, even those located at, for example, the center of the moon’s near side. There we will have to construct a base to interact with the beanstalk cable that will eventually be sent down from the balance point between the moon and Earth.
Once that cable is tethered, supplies and personnel will be able to ride the elevator up to space. Or down.
That beanstalk is only useful for sending and receiving things from Earth. To launch elsewhere in the system, you would have to use the Earth beanstalk, which whips around pretty good in order to counteract Earth’s gravity.
The lunar beanstalk is just balanced between Earth’s attraction and the lunar attachment, although both have about the same length, nearly sixty thousand miles.
Of course, that’s all in the future. Right now, we’re still trying to get our spider robots to learn how to handle tomatoes.