As far as I know, the only serious projects for human exploration of the Moon have been the Apollo project, some other US studies with Gemini capsules and a couple of embryonic Soviet projects.
I see in Wikipedia that geologist and astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who became the last to set foot on the Moon, had aggressively pushed for his landing site to be on the far side of the Moon, aiming at the lava-filled Tsiolkovskiy crater. NASA managers rejected these plans because of the added risk and lack of funding.
How close was this proposal to success? Were there any other NASA studies for a human landing on this hemisphere?