Whatever the merits of the search for ET, none of this requires a human presence on the moon all of the observational technology required to undertake the research could be controlled from Earth.  It doesn’t require a human presence on the moon, indeed if the purpose is for scientific research, there seems to be a strong argument for not having a human presence.  A human presence on the dark side of the Moon provides extra complications – and therefore extra costs – to simply keep the scientists alive. It seems likely that anybody based in such a situation would have to spend a large amount of their time and effort simply staying alive and performing monitoring functions that could as easily be provided from Huston.