"Dholmes" wrote in message .. .
what do we need to do before we send men back ?

A couple of things I came up with a

An orbiter to map the Moon in detail especially the poles. Many areas of the
Moon today are not mapped to 20 m resolution we can easily do 10m for the
entire moon and 1-2m for selected portions.

A follow on to Prospector getting a better idea of where the hydrogen is.

A radar map to give us a picture at depth of the Moons surface.

A couple of landers at potential base sites would be usefull.

What did I miss in my quick list?

Development of:
- Solar Electric tug to transport cargo from LEO to Lunar Orbit
- Lunar chemistry kit, to extract Oxygen from lunar soils
- Construction techniques appropriate to lunar conditions, e.g cut and
cover
- Edible plants that can grow in a lunar cycle
- Cheap and easy (not neccessarily efficient) solar cells that can be
manufactured on the moon or in space.
- Virtual Reality controlled robots for work on the lunar surface,
controlled in doors or even from Earth.
- Remote controlled digging machines that can collect ores from the
lunar surface