Back in the 1960s I read a young adult novel where a teenage Australian boy at a remote sheep station investigates strange goings on at the local meteor craters.
He discovers a secret rocket base and joins the crew in the first trip to the moon if I remember correctly. At one point he makes a space walk and drifts away but is rescued.
I guess it was probably written after World war II and before the space race began about 1960.
Sounds a lot like Moon Ahead, by Leslie Greener, though in that there were two boys involved.
One of them did have a narrow squeak such as you describe, and on the Moon they had a run in with a rival organisation.
They called the spaceship Shining Rock, because that was what the boys took it for when they first glimpsed it in the Australian desert.
Blast Off at Woomera by Hugh Walters? It's the first of a series starring a young man called Chris Godfrey. he is chosen to pilot the rocket because he is small and light.
