Someday, not too many years from now, some of you -the boys and girls who are reading this article -may stand on the moon.

The rest of us may watch you on television.

Perhaps you will stay at one of the new moon stations.

Because there is no air on the moon, a moon station will have to be well made so that it can hold the air that people will need in order to live and work on the moon. The tiniest crack or hole would soon let the air escape, and the workers would then be in trouble.

In order to breathe when they go outside, the workers will have to put on special suits with air tanks. But even with the suits on, they still will not be able to just open the door and walk out, for then all the air would rush out, too.

Instead, there will be a special small room between the inside room and the door to the outside. A worker will enter it first and close the inside door. Then he can open the outside door, and only the air in the little room will be lost.

Each explorer helps make it possible for those who come after him to go farther than he went. Someday people may leave from a moon station to go far into space.

Astronauts may travel to the stars someday. Some stars are so far away that it seems impossible to get to them. But people are very good at making their dreams come true.

Where would you choose to go?

When you look into the sky on a clear night, you can see a few bright specks of light that are planets. But they are not tiny specks at all. They look like specks because they're so far away.

The planets move around our sun as Earth does.

You can see thousands of other specks of light that are distant stars. These stars are much farther a way than the planets. Most of them are as big as our sun, and some are even bigger. They are probably so hot that a spaceship would burn up if it went too close to them.

What you can't see are the planets that move in circles around these hot stars. Some people think that many of the stars have planets circling them.

Some of these planets may have air that we can breathe and water that we can drink. Some of them may have plant or animal life. Some may have creatures that can think. If they do, their thinking creatures may be smarter than we are!

How far out into space can we go?

If we could go the fastest that some scientists think is possible, it would still take many years to go to the nearest star.

Because a trip far into space would take so long, some people think we'll never be able to explore the stars farthest away.

Questions for comprehension

1. Why must a moon station be well made to hold the air firmly?

2. What should the workers do in order to breathe when they go out of the station?

3. Why do stars look like specks of light?

4. How long will it take to go to the nearest star?