Japan Moon lander survives lunar night
(www.bbc.com)
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Meanwhile that's the real mistery about the moon. Moon surface is dark, so it would heat at daytime a lot from a sun. In the night the only way to lose heat is infrared radiation from heated surface, since vacuum is a perfect thermoinsulator.
This could only be the case if surface is very porous like styrofoam, so only thin top layer of moon soil heated and then easily cooled with heat radiation. But such surface would be very fragile, and would had been crushed into something more dense by meteorites long ago, so we back to more or less dense surface that should keep heat through the night.
Either the temperature difference is measured incorrectly - not as temperature inside moon soil, but as temperature of temperature sensor somewhere above it, in vacuum, either there is something very strange going.
If temperature is measured incorrectly, and temperature difference of moon surface is much lesss with same average of -30°C, then why make tall lunar modules and fight with extreme temperatures, instead of making flat devices that stick to soil and will have real moon surface temperature.
If temperature is measured correctly, then moon soil is one of the best thermoinsulators ever - strong enough to hold rocks and human devices and with very low thermal conductivity. So, replicate it, and you will get excellent building material, better than bricks or wood and even gased concrete or other stuff. in terms of strength/insulation ratio. This also means that it will be easy to build comfortable moon bases with minimum energy requirement for heating/cooling under such good thermoinsulator.