Vallis Baade
What Vallis Baade is
Vallis Baade is a vallis — a valley — on The Moon, 207 km across, centred at 45.6° S, 77.2° W in the Vallis Inghirami quadrangle. It is the 101st largest named feature on The Moon and the 6th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Named from nearby crater. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1964, under the theme it applies to every vallis on The Moon. Of the 14 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run Germany (5), The Netherlands (Dutch) (1), Czechoslovakia (1), Austria (1).
What it would take to settle Vallis Baade
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 45.6° S, 77.2° W.
What this spot has going for it is earth link — on the limb, where libration lifts Earth barely above the horizon. What works against it is water — outside the ice-bearing latitudes.
Computed from Vallis Baade'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 vallis features on The Moon
All 14 valles on The Moon — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.