alt Hacker NewsThere isn't a single "dark side" of the moon that's always in darkness, the "dark side" of the moon is the side that always faces away from us (poor choice of name). It's fully illuminated during a new moon.
Lunar regolith would probably be quite damaging to optics. It's nasty stuff. I have seen ideas for building liquid mirror telescopes on the moon, though.
Of course the dark side of the moon is illuminated by the sun at times. But it has minimal human illumination, so that's pretty nice.