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.
Woodpecker in the Moon the moon, but, two years later, hasn't returned to Earth. In the present day, at the Interplanetary Rocket Society, Professor P. Cosmo Clonk asks the other scientists if one of them will volunteer for the next manned mission to the moon. The scientists just look at each other until it boils down to Fido, the society's mascot, but Fido gulps and immediately pretends to have the measles. Professor Clonk tries to coax Fido to stop delaying the progress of science, but Fido, still refusing to go first tries pretending he isn't Fido and shows his master pictures of his family