Red Thunder is mostly a fun book with strong pro-personal-responsibility overtones and private space travel.

It is essentially an updated Heinlein juvenile, maybe targeted at young adults instead of young teens, but it reads almost the same. It also requires the same suspension of disbelief that the Heinlein juveniles did.

Four young people accidently run into an ex-astronaut and end up meeting his idiot-savant cousin, who has invented something that can provide unlimited power to space ships (among other things).

With propulsion taken care of and a handy million dollars (one of the kids and the cousin are rich) they build a space ship and fly it to Mars in three days, beating the Communist Chinese and NASA missions that have been traveling for months.

Along the way you get to know the characters, most of whom are just scraping by. However, they take personal responsibility for their situation and don't blame others. They don't want handouts, and the mother of one character uses firearms to defend her property. All in all good stuff.

Where it breaks down is when they reach Mars. It seems from that point on that Varley is trying to rush things through. The ending, where the technology is turned over to an international agency for safekeeping, is especially disappointing. A private solution would have been much more satisfactory, not only from a libertarian point of view. It would have been more consistent with the rest of the book.

Overall, while not an ideal candidate for the Prometheus Award, this is a well written book and has quite a bit of appeal for libertarians.