Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet

Then there were two years of hard training on the space platform and the moon before a recruit was finally accepted as a Planeteer private. Rip learned that the tall Hawaiian had been to every planet in the system, had fought the Venusians on the central desert, and had mined nuclite with SOS One on Mercury. Santos was crouched over the rocket launcher, his space gloves working rapidly as he kept the rockets pointed at the enemy. He and his men rode the gray planet past the moon, so close they could almost see the Planeteer lunar base, circled Terra in a series of ellipses, and finally blasted the asteroid into its final orbit within sight of the space platform.