What if you touched the moon

2021-11-23张岚

疯狂英语·新悦读 2021年10期

题材宇宙体裁说明文文章词数难度建议用时3 3 7 ★★★ 6分钟

1Over ten people have walked on the moon since humans landed there,but no one has ever directly touched its surface.Those astronauts wore spacesuits outside the lander.No one ever took off a glove or a boot while standing on the moon.

2“Once we got inside and took off our suits and gloves,we did have some lunar dust on the floor,and rocks that were not bagged,”said Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke,who walked on the moon in 1972.“On the way home,I collected the rocks floating around the spacecraft.When I got back,I stuck them in a little jar,and then I turned them back into NASA.”

3While touching lunar rocks inside a spacecraft is one thing,removing a glove and exposing yourself to the vacuum （真空）of space is another.In science fiction,terrible things happen to such astronauts:their blood boils away;their insides get sucked out.

4But removing a glove wouldn't necessarily be fatal.For the most part,human skin is tough enough to handle brief exposure to a vacuum.If you had a custom spacesuit with a seal around your forearm,you could probably remove your glove during a moonwalk without suffering lasting damage.

5On Earth,the hottest sun-baked rocks might reach 170 degrees Fahrenheit,but on the moon,where the sun stays visible for weeks at a time,it never gets cloudy,and there's no breeze to carry away the heat—it gets even hotter.

6If your hand hit a rock,you might find yourself pulling it back instantly in pain.Moon dust may not burn you,but it's no picnic.Like the sand on the earth,moon dust is effectively made of tiny glass shards（尖利的碎片）,whose edges have not been worn down by erosion.As a result,it can be pretty unhealthy.

7But so long as you avoided touching rocks or metal,washed your hands afterwards and didn't mind some temporary （暂时的） swelling（肿胀）,you could probably touch the moon and survive.