If we get tides from the Moon, should Earth cause some significant tidal damage on the Moon? I know there's no oceans, but shouldn't the crust be pulled and twisted constantly?

I was thinking about (theoretically) building underground colonies on the Moon, by hollowing out the rock - but then I realised that the tidal forces would probably make the sealing process rather frustrating.

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We had some seismometers on the moon from at the Apollo landing sites. As I recall, the moon was mostly seismically quiet, with a few rare deep moon-quakes, and the once-in-a-while ringing from a heavy meteorite-hit.

I'm sure the details of this are on the web somewhere.

If you're going to live on the moon, underground dwellings are probably a very good idea.

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I wouldn't say damage, but Earth's tidal forces definitelly have some effect on the Moon.

* The Moon allways shows the same face to us earthlings. This is because with time the tidal force's have locked it up in that position. A classical example is the Pluto / Charon system: both planets are locked onto each other.
As a matter of fact the same thing is happening to Earth. Many years from now one side of the Earth will be lucky enough to have the Moon all to itself. I just hope Europe is on that half (not that I'm gonna be here to see it but... ) You can read more about it at Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board

* The Moon is deformed. Since it's allways showing the same side to us the Moon's shape has deformed influenced by the Earth's gravity, assuming a slightly egg-shaped form, with it's pointy end pointing towards us. Of course the deformation is not very obvious but it exists.

There is another factor for the absence of major damage: the Moon doesn't have a plate tectonic like Earth does. It's more or less massive, no placks floating around crashing against each other. So the Moon isn't very inclined towards having moonquakes. So you can live underground safelly (and if you do, can I come to visit )

Just my bit of cosmic dust

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The seisnic network that the Apollo astronauts left on the moon operated for 8 years, and observed about 1300 moonquakes per year. About 200 per year were due to impacts, and most of the other 1100 were deep events, about half way to the core. The biggest event would have been about 4 on the Richter scale, so the danger is small.

And yes, tides do appear to have an effect, even though the moon keeps one side to the earth, and therefore the tidal bulges only move a little. The moon doesn't really keep one side perfectly lined up with the earth, it does wobble a bit - see my favourite internet .gif file for an explanation of that.

Anyway, the earth does raise tides in the body of the moon, and they do vary, partly because of the wobble, and partly because the moon's orbit is pretty eccentric, so the tidal stresses get bigger when the moon is near perigee.

But a 4 point quake is probably not something to lose a lot of sleep over. See the Artemis Project site for more details.