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The Moon · Promontorium · 1001st largest named feature

Promontorium Laplace

Pierre Simon; French mathematician, astronomer (1749-1827).

What Promontorium Laplace is

Promontorium Laplace is a promontorium — a cape, where a highland juts into a plain — on The Moon, 50 km across, centred at 46.8° N, 25.5° W in the Sinus Iridum quadrangle. It is the 1001st largest named feature on The Moon and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Pierre Simon; French mathematician, astronomer (1749-1827). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1935, under the theme it applies to every promontorium on The Moon. Of the 9 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run France (3), Greek (2), Russia (2), Scotland (1).

Feature class
a cape, where a highland juts into a plain
Diameter
50 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
46.8° N, 25.5° W
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
1935
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Sinus Iridum
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
France
Europe

What it would take to settle Promontorium Laplace

The Moon scores 29.1 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 46.8° N, 25.5° W.

Settlement difficulty here
29.7/ 100
Typical for this world
The Moon overall
29.1
0.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
1131st
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 38° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Promontorium Laplace's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest promontorium features on The Moon