"This Is Not the Way Home" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in the anthology Mission Critical edited by Jonathan Straham in 2019.
Aisha, who since childhood had dreamed about becoming an astronaut, and her husband Gianni win a honeymoon on a Chinese moon base.
She devises a plan to use a skyhook in lunar orbit to launch a vehicle back to Earth, and then gently sings for her baby.
In summary, "Egan sets up an intriguing problem for his story but disappoints [...] for two reasons," which are that "there were just too many lucky breaks lining up one after the other to be believable" and that "we never found out why the moonbase lost contact with Earth.
"[3] Russell Letson wrote in the Locus Magazine, that the short story is an "ingenious escape" and that "their rocketless voyage is given a detailed description.