I probably would have rated this Heinlein juvenile higher except I felt after the active first half, climaxing on Luna, the book turns more speechifying with long discursions on Vega and the trial scenes (which seems always to be an authors excuse to pile on long monologues). The whole HUMANITY ON TRIAL scenario of the second half feels rather tritely pulpy after the hard sf of the first part. Loved Heinlein's descriptions of Kip's spacesuit and how he improves it and the soap contest is a nice exposé on advertising gimmickry.
Usually I roll my eyes when Heinlein goes on a rant about whatever, but I have to confess really loving his tear on crappy high school education - a rare case of my opinion actually matching his. Of course I didn't go on to teach myself calculus and Latin like Kip.
RAH is the prototypical engineer sf writer and is great at describing closed systems and how to manipulate them -- the problem for his adult fiction is that he tries to apply the same closed system thinking (libertarianism in his case) to the real world.
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