As mentioned earlier, the diminishing value of the lunar surface is due to advances in supporting technology. Thirty years ago, astronomical telescopes on the lunar surface looked profoundly enabling because we simply didn’t know how to point telescopes in free space. We do now, and we do it better—using, for example, the twenty-five-year-old technology of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)—than with any telescope on the surface of the Earth. A “debate” on the relative merits of the Moon for astronomy is found in a recent issue of Physics Today.

I've long been an advocate of L based vs Lunar based astronomy.