Rocket Ship Galileo

I can just see Heinlein as a teenager, hiding under his blanket and playing with his wand, astronomy textbooks splayed all around him with their covers spread wide. This is a guy who may just get his astrobation on more than Arthur C Clarke. Herein lies the tale of three teenaged boys who like building rockets and get pulled into an inventor's crazy scheme to build a rocket that can make it all the way to the moon!!!!!!! I know, right? Remember, this is from 1947, so when this puppy came out, this idea was so "out there" quite a few publishers rejected it based on its outlandishness. But Heinlein got it published, and began his illustrious decade of juvinile novels, followed by his Golden Period starting with Starship Troopers. This morphed into his Creepy Old Man period, which was unfortunately the last period he had. If my reliable sources (wikipedia and Aerin) are reliable, his Creepy Old Man period's primary themes are incest, time travel, incest, free love, incest and incest. That being said, this book is less fun than the other two I've read by him so far. The primary reasons for this are the vague characterizations of the children and the sheer level of technical sense-o-wonder scenes: "They connected the A-Valve to the primary submodilator, which sent a combustion of zinc fibers up the right chamber of the whozawhatsee, which created a reaction that used reverse gravitational magnetism to propell the rocket forward." Imagine paragraphs like that. That's my made up version of the technoporn going on here; perhaps the stuff he's coming up with in this book means something. I'm not scientifically minded enough to know. But the end does a lot to redeem the lackluster first 100 pages. ***SPOILER ALERT FOR REST OF THE REVIEW*** You see, when they arrive on the moon, they find the remnants of a moon people civilazation...which is cool enough...but THEN...they find...NAZIS! AAAAAH! Although World War II is over, a small group of Nazis are camped out on the moon with some big-ass bombs, ready to initiate Project Nuke The Good Guys. Our crew has to use their brilliance to out-think the Nazis if they ever want to make it back to Earth. One thing I loved here was the fact that the children did everything important. The scientist got scared when he was trying to land the ship and one of the kids had to do it. The kids had to defend them against the Nazis because the adult got knocked unconscious. The kids also came up with a lot of the most brilliant ideas. So, this book sense the message to kids that, by cooperating with both adults and other kids, they can do huge and important things, like fly to the moon and kill Nazis. Would I read it again? Sure. It took all of two hours, and it had its fun parts. Would I recommend it? Uhhh....as a cultural artifact, it's quite amusing. Nothing like reading old SF to see how continually surprising and hard to predict scientific progress can be. ******* (Since the original review got a vote, it hasn't been deleted. It has just been pushed down here.) I suppose this is going to spoil the book's one big surprise for you, but I imagine it's the only way to get you to read a juvenile from the forties about a (GASP!) trip to the moon. So here it comes, big spoiler alert.....drumroll......NAZIS MADE IT TO THE MOON BEFORE US! AAAAAAH! And it's up to three meddling kids to stop their evil schemes! Real review coming up. I'm too A.D.D. this morning to formulate more than one paragraph of cohesive thought at once.