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.
Tourism on the Moon landing. PTScientists is a partner of For All Moonkind, Inc. and has pledged that its mission will honor heritage preservation and abide by all relevant guidelines. Space tourism companies which have announced they are pursuing lunar tourism include Space Adventures, Excalibur Almaz, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. The company Space Adventures has announced a planned mission, titled DSE-Alpha, to take two tourists within of the lunar surface, using a Soyuz spacecraft piloted by a professional cosmonaut. The trip would last around a week. In February 2017, SpaceX announced it had accepted deposits for a private week-long flyby mission to the Moon,