the stars were closed to max jones to get into space you either needed connections a membership in the guild or a whole lot more money than max the son of a widowed poor mother was every going to have what max does have going for him are his uncles prized astrogation manualsbook on star navigation that max literally commits to memory word for word equation for equation from the first golden age of heinlein this is the socalled juvenile written heinlein always claims just as much for adults that started them all and made heinlein a legend for multiple generations of readers