Excerpt from The Official Residents’ Guide to Moon Base Alpha, “Appendix A: Potential Health and Safety Hazards,” © 2040 by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

ROCKETS

Perhaps the most dangerous pieces of machinery at MBA are the rockets designed to deliver you there and bring you back home. While riding on a rocket has become hundreds of times safer in recent years, being near a rocket when it is taking off or landing is still exceptionally dangerous. This is especially the case on the moon, where the lack of atmosphere allows debris blown clear by the rockets to travel great distances at potentially deadly speeds. For this reason, no lunarnaut is to be on the surface at any time during a rocket landing or departure, including during arrivals of supply capsules and other spacecraft. Furthermore, even once the rockets have landed, lunarnauts should avoid going anywhere near the engines—which can be hot enough to melt through space suits—until said engines have had at least three hours to cool down.