Back to the Moon Back to the Moon Back to the Moon is a science fiction novel and Homer Hickam's first fictional book. Published in June 1999, Hickam wrote Back to the Moon using insider information he learned from NASA. The prologue of the novel begins with a dramatized account of the second EVA of Apollo 17. Astronaut Jack Schmitt discovers orange soil in Shorty Crater at the very end of the EVA and gathers samples in a race against time to get back to the LEM. Meanwhile, Wernher von Braun is watching the end of the mission on TV with other NASA engineers.
We choose to go to the Moon such an achievement. He specifically asked him to investigate whether the United States could beat the Soviet Union in putting a laboratory in space, or orbiting a man around the Moon, or landing a man on the Moon, and to find out what such a project would cost. Johnson consulted with officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Its new Administrator, James E. Webb, told him that there was no chance of beating the Russians to launching a space station, and it was uncertain as to whether NASA could orbit a man around the Moon first, so the