You are right about Earth rotating. I spaced out on that one.
About the ecliptic, I was trying to say that any observatory on the moon would have issues observing polar regions because the Earth surface in polar regions would be at a low angle. I know some spy sats "look ahead" to get better detail resolution but they have ability to look from different angles as well. Moon would be a bad spot for that.
Rest of it I mostly agree. One thing up to debate is whether an outpost on the moon would be useful. If you can manufacture fuel on the Moon, it would be very useful. Another aspect is human health in zero G. Moon with low gravity may be enough to help with long term human stay.
The lunar orbit is inclined so that the moon moves between about +/- 28 degrees north/south latitude with reference to the Earth equatorial plane.
That's Earth's axial tilt of ~23 deg + the inclination of the lunar orbit w.r.t. the ecliptic of ~5 deg.
This means that when the moon is at its northest (above southern Florida), it has a pretty good view over the north pole (but it's at quite an oblique angle of ~60 deg), and the south pole is not visible. About 14 days later it's the opposite.
But yeah, I agree with the conclusion that the Moon is not a good place for a Earth observation for a lot of reasons.
About the ecliptic, I was trying to say that any observatory on the moon would have issues observing polar regions because the Earth surface in polar regions would be at a low angle. I know some spy sats "look ahead" to get better detail resolution but they have ability to look from different angles as well. Moon would be a bad spot for that.
Rest of it I mostly agree. One thing up to debate is whether an outpost on the moon would be useful. If you can manufacture fuel on the Moon, it would be very useful. Another aspect is human health in zero G. Moon with low gravity may be enough to help with long term human stay.