Passage IIIt is not possible to admit that there is life of any sort on the moon. It is a world that is completely and utterly dead, a sterile mountainous waste on which, during the heat of the day, the sun blazes down with relentless fury, but where during the long night the cold is so intense that it far surpasses anything ever experienced on earth.These hard facts are conveniently ignored by those who believe that it would be possible to shoot a rocket containing human beings to the moon, from which the human explorers could land and explore some portion of the moon’s surface. The explorers would need to be encased in airtight suits and provided with oxygen apparatus to enable them to breathe. Even supposing that they could protect themselves against the great heat by day and the extreme cold at night, a worse fate might be in store for them unless their suits were completely bullet-proof. For they would be in danger of being shot by a shooting star. The average shooting star or melody which gives so strongly the impression of as tar falling from the sky, is a small fragrant of matter, usually smaller thana pea and often no longer than a grain of sand. Space is not empty but contains great numbers of such fragrants. The earth, in its motion round the sun, meets many of these frangrants. Which enter the atmosphere at a speed many times greater than that of a riflebullet. The meteor, rushing through the air, becomes intensely heated by friction and is usually completely vapourised before it penetrates through a distance of twenty miles from the surface of the earth. Many millions of these frangrants enter our atmosphere in the course of a day, but the atmosphere protects usfrom them. On the moon, however they fail to the surface and so great is their number that the lunar explorers would run a considerable risk of being hit. The difficulties that would have to been countered by anyone who attempted to explore the moon assuming that it is was possible to get there – would be incomparably greater than those that have to be faced in the endeavour to reach the summit of Mount Everest . in two respects only would the lunarexplorers have the advantage. In the first place, movement would be less fatiguing because gravitational pull of the moon is not very great, the weight of the moon being only about one eightieth of the earth. The second advantage the lunar explorer would have over the climbers on mount Everest would be the absence of strong winds to contend with. The moon having not atmosphere , there can be no wind nor of course, can there be any noise, for sound is carried by the air. The moon is a world that is completely still and where utter silence prevails.
