The barren Moon could become an astronomer's paradise, an ideal spot for telescopes and other devices to scope out the heavens as never before.

Creating the lunar lookout is one proposal under review during the weeklong fifth gathering of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) being held this week on the Kohala Coast, Hawai'i Island. Astronauts, scientists and engineers, as well as business people and entrepreneurs are sharing ways to convert the bleak Moon into a bustling, off-Earth continent for scientific research, technology testing, producing energy, even as practice ground for future expeditions to Mars.

Representatives from various spacefaring nations, including China, India, and Japan are taking part in the event, seeking to develop global and inter-global partnerships to further a lunar exploration agenda.

"The Moon is the next logical step after the space station," said Steve Durst, ILEWG 5 Co-chair and head of Space Age Publishing Company. "It is important that we become a multi-planet species…and that begins at the Moon."

Durst said that this week's ILEWG get-together brings to the table interests of the six major spacefaring powers: the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, China and India. "That's the big story of this gathering…the international nature of lunar exploration that's forming," he noted.

"NASA has had an irrational taboo and paranoia about the Moon for a long time," Durst said. "If you just go straight to Mars nothing will change."

The number one goal of the conference, Durst said, is to see people on the Moon within the decade. To kick-start that objective, a strategy to be presented is planting on the lunar surface an initial astronomical capability. That first element would later be serviced and upgraded by "astronomer technicians", as would a build-up of other observational gear. In tending a growing cluster of lunar-based instruments, a human presence on the Moon would evolve, he said.

Considering the Moon as a heavenly counterpart to a mountaintop on Earth suitable for astronomy fits well given the locale of the meeting, Durst added.

The summit of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii, for instance, hosts the world's largest astronomical observatory, with telescopes operated by astronomers from eleven countries. There are currently thirteen working telescopes near the summit of Mauna Kea. Nine of them are for optical and infrared astronomy, three of them are for submillimeter wavelength astronomy and one is for radio astronomy.