Rocket Ship Galileo

The first Heinlein juvenile, and a very odd thing it is too. Written in 1947, its set possibly in the early 50s at a time when rocketships are available for use around the earth, but governments and businesses are uninterested in space travel. So a brilliant nobel winning scientist decides to go it alone, on a shoestring, with the help of his geeky nephew and his two friends. He buys a second hand rocket which the boys prepare for space travel. They have a kind of prefab hut which contains a lathe, a power saw, and a couple of other tools to do the task(!). They buy some thorium to atomically power the rocket, and it is delivered and left on the field beside the ship! Yep its one of those good old rockets with fins, that have to land tail down. Villains try to sabotage the work but off they go to the moon, where they find Nazis lurking ready to bomb the world until they submit to Nazi rule. It was strange to see the rabid anti-german insults, the sort of thing reserved for evil arab terrorists today. The boys win through, nonchalantly ambushing the dirty rats who bombed their ship, killing them without turning a hair, steal the Nazi ship and tricking the evil leader into telling them how to fly the ship. Oh, and off to the side, they discover tunnels built by the original lunar people millenia ago. They return to earth to be feted as saviours. Lots of chunks of facts about space, not neatly subordinated to the plot and characters as his other juveniles were, but I'm sure the high school science geeks reading felt superior at having at least a hazy idea of the science, and had a ball dreaming of going into space, to go off into space. Apparently Heinlein had a hard time getting it in print because the idea of space travel seemed too outlandish and far fetched. I think possibly it was the sheer naivete of the events that put some publishers off. For instance, you have this dangerous radioactive material, bought from a shop(!) and to save weight in the rocket they decide to leave it unshielded on one side, that side facing outer space. Meanwhile, while the rocket is on the ground , it will face away from the quonset hut! They congratulate themselves on having the forethought to face the rocket that way in landing in the field. Or what about taking flying lessons for a few days, and adding on the shortened rocket flying lessons allowed for anyone with a pilots licence. The kid is then ready to fly them to the moon after 4 days lessons. I have to wonder what all those astronauts at NASA were doing in the 60s, all that training and education. These kids with the right stuff were ready in a couple of weeks. lol. I was a bit bemused by it all, but it was an interesting, if bonkers read.