Rocket Ship Galileo model 01

The dust jacket illustration for the 1947 Scribner's edition. Artist: Thomas Voter. After World War 2, three teenage rocket experimenters are recruited by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who happens to be the uncle of one of them, to refit a chemically-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 "Galileo," and take off for the Moon. After landing and establishing a semi-permanent structure based on a Quonset hut, they claim the moon on behalf of the United Nations, then set up a radio to communicate with the Earth. But they pick up local signals and discover that someone has beaten them to the Moon and has kept it secret from everyone on Earth.