What if Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had returned to Virginia to describe the fabulous landscapes, exotic cultures, and abundant resources of the Louisiana Territory, only to have Congress cut off funding for future exploration west of the Mississippi, calling the enterprise a wasteful distraction?
The question is hypothetical, but Homer Hickam, Jr., feels that the U.S. government made that grave a mistake when it killed the Apollo program, confining all subsequent manned spaceflight to low-earth orbit. In his memoir Rocket Boys, Hickam recalled how his prize-winning high school rocketry project in 1957, the year of Sputnik, lifted him out of his native West Virginia coal-mining village into the ranks of NASA engineers. (The memoir was recently made into the successful film October Sky.) Considering how the space program transformed their lives, it’s not surprising that Hickam and others of his generation at NASA feel betrayed by Apollo’s cancellation.
To ease his frustration, Hickam has turned to fiction. Back to the Moon is a techno-thriller about Jack Medaris, a brilliant rocket scientist and obsessed widower who hijacks the space shuttle Columbia and flies it to the moon. Ostensibly he’s searching for helium-3, a rare form of the element that could make nuclear fusion practical. Privately, he hopes to reconnect with his dead wife-exactly how, I won’t give away. Hickam provides plenty of sex, violence, conspiracy and suspense to keep the story moving, but his real emphasis is on the technology.
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