Well it’s the same anywhere in space outside Earth, that we can’t breathe. There is nowhere outside of Earth that we know of with a breathable atmosphere. And it’s not just that, even with an oxygen mask you still can’t breathe because the air pressure is too low, so your lungs can’t work. They can’t work because the water lining your lungs will boil in the vacuum. That’s why astronauts need to wear a full body spacesuit, because they have to keep the air under high pressure, not far of Earth pressure, to be able to breathe at all.

Then, there are the solar storms. These can kill you. Or make you seriously sick.It’s probably not true that the Apollo astronauts would have died on the Moon if caught out in a solar storm on the surface. But they would have had to be rushed straight to hospital when they got back for radiation treatment and would be in a serious trouble.

Then you also have the micrometeorites. If two people spend 2700 hours or about a year of 8 hour days doing EVA for the ISS it’s about 6% chance of being hit by a very tiny micrometeorite. The chance of getting hit during a 10 hour EVA is roughly the same as your chance of dying of a road accident in a year, so not huge. But if you spent a lot of time out of doors on the Moon in a spacesuit it’s a significant risk.

Basically we need some very good reason to be there. Not a place to go to live for it’s own sake, But it’s the same for Mars. All those things also apply to Mars except the micrometeorites.

Another issue for the Moon is that you have 14 hour nights and 14 hour days. It gets very hot in the daytime and bitterly cold at night.

Nevertheless, if you look at it another way not as a place to colonize, or not right away, but as a place to set up aresearch base or even tourist hotels etc, then it’s pretty good actually. And if there is anywhere in space where it is worth setting up a commercial operation to exploit things there, the Moon is a good bet. So think of it not so much like a colony - nowhere in space is like that in the near future at least. But rather like Antarctica or like an oil rig or a nuclear submarine or some place that goes to very hostile places - it’s like that. If there is some reason to be there we may well set up anoutpost there. Whetehr we have colonies I think depends on having a good reason to be there, for lots of people, enough for a colony, finance to sujpport them, and some way to make sure that habitats there are reasonably self contained and easy to maintain .We aren’t quite there yet.

You might like my

Case For Moon First (free online copy)

also available on Kindle as Case For Moon First: Gateway to Entire Solar System - Open Ended Exploration, Planetary Protection at its Heart