Rocket Ship Galileo
First edition cover
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
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| Illustrator | Thomas Voter |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Heinlein juveniles |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Scribner's |
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Publication date
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May 1, 1947 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 212 |
| Followed by | Space Cadet |
Rocket Ship Galileo is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1947, about three teenagers who participate in a pioneering flight to the Moon. It was the first in the Heinlein juveniles, a long and successful series of science fiction novels published by Scribner's. The novel was originally envisioned as the first of a series of books called "Young Rocket Engineers". It was initially rejected by publishers, because going to the moon was "too far out".
After World War II, three teenage boy rocket experimenters are recruited by one boy's uncle, Dr. Cargraves, a renowned physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, to refit a conventionally powered surplus "mail rocket". It is to be converted to run on a thorium nuclear pile which boils zinc as a propellant. They use a cleared area in a military weapons test range in the desert for their work, despite prying and sabotage attempts by unknown agents.
Upon completion of the modifications, they stock the rocket, which they name the Galileo, and take off for the Moon, taking approximately 3 days to arrive. After establishing a semi-permanent structure based on a Quonset hut, they claim the moon on behalf of the United Nations.
As they set up a radio to communicate with the Earth they pick up a local transmission, the sender of which promises to meet them. Instead, their ship is bombed. Fortunately, they are able to hole up undetected in their hut and succeed in ambushing the other ship when it lands, capturing the pilot. They discover that there is a Nazi base on the Moon. They bomb it from their captured ship and land. One survivor is found, revived, and questioned.
The boys also find evidence of an ancient lunar civilization, and postulate that the craters of the moon were formed not by impacts from space, but by nuclear bombs that destroyed the alien race.
When the base's Nazi leader shoots the pilot in order to silence him, Cargraves convenes a trial and finds him guilty of murder. Cargraves prepares to execute the prisoner by ejecting him into vacuum, mostly as a bluff for information on how to fly the base's spaceship. The Nazi capitulates in the airlock and teaches them how to fly the ship back to Earth.
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Wikipedia