Wendy Zukerman

Junk immediately got into my eyes.

The dust really bothered my eyes and throat.

I was tasting it and eating it.

So when you're in an environment where you can't even go outside without putting a spacesuit on and then you come back inside, you've got dust everywhere.

You got to figure out how to deal with that.

And another thing that they'll be dealing with is drinking water.

At first, our moonstronauts will get their water from a spacecraft orbiting the moon, kind of like the International Space Station.

But it's hoped that these pioneers will ultimately find good water sources on the moon that they could drink and then start to fend for themselves.

And eventually, the vision is that if we do find enough water on the moon, maybe we'd use it not just for drinking water, but for something else, as fuel to power rocket ships that would venture out into the solar system.

And this isn't totally bonkers.

You know, water, even on the moon, is just hydrogen and oxygen.

And the fuel that we usually use for rockets now is hydrogen.

And we can split apart those water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

And then that hydrogen can be used as a rocket fuel.

Oh, do we have all the science for that yet?

We do.

Yep, we know how to do this.

Plus, having a gas station on the moon would be an added bonus, because it would be easier for rockets to take off from around there, because they could sidestep Earth's strong gravity.

Okay, so it makes sense that you'd want to figure out the nuts and bolts of living on the moon before you live on Mars.

But maybe you're not sold on any of this.