Why does one side of the moon always face the earth while the other faces away?

Thank you for an interesting and challenging question. Gads, it's certainly a very welcome change from the Mars-August 27 flurry, or why the sky is blue do aliens exist what's outside the Universe is an asteroid coming in September how far is it to the moon/sun did we really land on the Moon fluff this forum is inundated with on a daily basis. And this is a question that is damned hard to find references to on the Web, if there are any at all.

I don't think it would work, though not necessarily for the reason my friend Nyx says. If it's true the antennas do point toward Earth and not omnidirectional, they are still hemi-directional in order to cover the whole Earth, and the satellites *behind* the Earth relative to the Moon would have the Moon in their line of sight. So, assuming the signals are strong enough over 250,000 km or the lunar receivers were big enough, they would be receivable on the near side of the Moon.

So, the question really is, does enough spatial information exist for a potential receiver to get an accurate fix, and I'm *guessing*, but can't prove, that the answer is 'no'. Look at a configuration diagram for the GPS system. Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Pos... From Earth, satellites are visible from widely-divergent angles in all three dimensions, x, y, and z.

From the Moon, the signals would all come from the same direction, with relatively little angular separation between them, and the 3-D triangulation is lost entirely. It might be possible for a clever programmer to come up with an algorithm that could look at the most widely separated satellites and come up with a very approximate location, but even if that were managed it wouldn't have anywhere near the spatial ground resolution to be useful. In other words, it wouldn't tell you anything that you didn't already know, the general area of the Moon you're on.

Still, for anyone looking for an essay subject, this is an interesting one to consider. Thanks again for a quality question.

No. The Moon is 240,000 miles away (avarage) -- TWELVE TIMES farther than the GPS satellites. Therefore, the "shield" represented by GPS coverage would represent only a small conical shape to the "near side of the moon, and the "dark side of the moon would get only poor reception of the satellite signal, if any at all.. GPS readings on the near side of the moon would be VERY limited, and nonexistent on the "dark side".

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.