Dorsum Cushman
What Dorsum Cushman is
Dorsum Cushman is a dorsum — a ridge — on The Moon, 85.7 km across, centred at 1.4° N, 49.2° E in the Taruntius quadrangle. It is the 491st largest named feature on The Moon and the 27th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Joseph Augustine; American micropaleontologist (1881-1949). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1976, under the theme it applies to every dorsum on The Moon. Of the 39 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run Great Britain (8), American (6), Germany (5), Switzerland (4).
What it would take to settle Dorsum Cushman
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 1.4° N, 49.2° E.
What this spot has going for it is earth link — near side — Earth stands 41° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water — outside the ice-bearing latitudes.
Computed from Dorsum Cushman'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 dorsum features on The Moon
All 39 dorsa on The Moon — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.