If I were still a teenage boy, I'd give it 5 stars, but at 75 I want more depth, although Heinlein wrote this in 1956 with an 18-year-old lead. Here's an example of the teenage mindset: "Nobody objected to a kiss or two if somebody wanted to check on the taste."
Here's some quotes illustrating ideas broached.
1. Mind-reading , instantaneous action-at-a-distance
2. punched cards. Personal computers not envisioned
3. I don’t believe all this complicated universe got here by accident
4. [N]o man can tell another man and that is where his duty lies.

Some attitude quotes that may repulse you.
1. ... a bureaucrat standing behind every productive worker dreaming up more rules and restrictions
2. ...root cause of war is always population pressure Heinlein titled a chapter, Lebenstraum. Echoes of Hitler's verbalized motives, though not his real motives imo, which were an individual psychopathy that drove him to assert his influence over everything and to do it by force when necessary.
3. The only thing wrong with that boy is that his parents should have walloped him , instead of telling him how bright he was
4. Unc[le] pointed out gently that she had better have her husband’s consent. and women please go over there by the pantry so that I can pick the men who will go. Classic, ancient paternalism

A few examples of skilled craftmanship:
1. The first person narrator makes some comments then says Answer me that pulling the reader smoothly into the storyline.
2. Doctor Devereaux said to write it all Nice foreshadowing (p 3) of a doctor who is not ntroduced until much later (p 52)
3. A long time later I told Van about it Interesting flash forward
4. too heavy for humanity’s fallen arches. humorous comparison, though not done with parallel options which would have made the attitude ludicrous rather than intelligently flippant.
5. Heinlein's uses words to dust over the tracks of facts and leave the reader, me, wondering just what the facts are. That suited the sci fi novel which couldn't maintain rigid logic through its what-if-twins-could-read-the-other-twin's-mind-instantaneously premise.
As my lengthy review indicates, I found the novel stimulating and rewarding.

In Heinlein's 10th juvenile novel (1956), he played with ESP and rivalry among twins. Tom Paine Bartlett and his brother Pat are Mind Readers, recruited into a 'Long Range Foundation' program exploring the speed and powers of telepathy. Earth's growing population and its colonies in the solar system, and advances in the speed of space travel have made other stars and planets accessible. One problem: the speed of communication between galactic explorers and Earth takes far too long. When 12 starships are commissioned to find new habitable planets, twins and triplets with ESP are recruited to be communicators for their mind-reading capacity moves faster than the speed of light. Pat Bartlett is trained to be a communicator but an accident disqualifies him at the last moment. Tom replaces him on the voyage that seems like four years in his life, while everyone on Earth ages over 80 years. In the competitive relationship of Tom and Pat, Heinlein explored the psychology of sibling rivalry, dominance, and how Tom becomes his own person on the voyage. He also explored the challenges of alienation and reconciliation when astronauts age only a few years while most of their generation have become seniors or died. The conclusion has a surprising plot twist. This is a great novel for middle schoolers and high school age given its exploration of adolescent psychology. The introduction of ESP made it seem more like a fantasy than some of Heinlein's other Sy Fy, but much of the 'science' in Sy Fy is fantasy to begin with. Highly recommended!

The worst Heinlein juvenile I’ve read so far. There may be worse Heinlein books—and until reading the last chapter I was going to give it two stars partly for that reason—but Heinlein truly did his best to show his lecherous old man side in this one, despite being only in his forties when writing it.
The last chapter takes the cake, but throughout, this book had already risen to new standards of chauvinism, patronizing talk, valuing the wrong thing, and gross desires. And tragically, it is a book written for teenagers, attempting to educate them about how the world really is. Now part of me is wondering if I have given the other juveniles too much benefit of the doubt. But actually I do think that this one is mich worse. The story is really boring, too!

I had read this before, at a time when I was more of a Heinlein fan and wanted to read everything by him, and the free ebook deal was a good reason to refresh my memory. The book is one of his juveniles, written and calibrated for a specific target audience at a specific point in time. Within those parameters, it is a very well written book containing themes that have been explored more interestingly by other writers in later years (e.g. Forever War goes wild on the societal change on Earth experienced by space travelers). It seems like Heinlein read about the twin paradox, and decided to write about actual twins in such a situation, but having them stay in contact the whole time via story magic.

One thing you can count on in a Heinlein novel is that he has done his math, whenever possible. If you assume his incredibly efficient torch propulsion system, you can count on the relativistic effects and travel times being of the right order. Now, the instantaneous mind-to-mind communication would be a huge problem for Einsteinian physics (which is acknowledged in the book). It is also an example of the way the Golden Age authors kept flirting with "psionics".

One thing I noticed this time around was how casually the characters treated the ecosystems of extrasolar planets: if there was nothing they would recognize as "civilization", it was perfectly all right to open the place for settlers and exterminate any inconvenient lifeforms. Large assumptions were made about biological compatibility, but this is a book for a young audience anyway. In reality, overpopulation will never be solved by shipping people off planet.

It is interesting how sparsely the Earth society is described; the readers can make their own assumptions. There is the odd tidbit about the narrator finding hatless females somehow scandalous on his return to Earth. And why is the project called Lebensraum? The word does have its sinister connotations, and when this book was written they were rather fresh.

An interesting and enjoyable read.

This is one of Heinlein's classic juveniles. It takes the premise that telepathy between twins is possible and the only means of communicating faster than life. So when the first spaceships are sent to find new colony worlds, one twin goes with the ship while the other stays behind. Tom resents that everyone just assumes he will be the one to stay home while his brother Pat adventures in space. But when Pat has a skiing accident, Tom gets to go off. This is 1950s SF so the worlds are far more Earthlike than we now would suspect. And, maybe because it is a juvie, but it doesn't do enough with the idea that one twin gets old and the other stays young due to relativity. And the ending does get a bit into the Heinlein icky territory.

Not the best of the juveniles -- Citizen of the Galaxy, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, and Podykane of Mars-- but not the worst either.

After the last couple of books I needed something of a palate cleanser, something light and quick and this fit the bill. I ended up knocking it out in two days as compared to the three weeks for the last book.

What is their to say about Heinlein that hasn't already been said. If you have an interest in science fiction you must read Heinlein. Sure, some of it is dated now and his characters are a bit secondary to the ideas but they are fun reads.

Yes, there is the almost casual sexism that is common to most books of the era. Yes the ending still leaves me as uncomfortable now as it did when I read it as a teenager even though the genetic connection is far enough removed to not be an issue.

Even so, I love reading these. They were among my first introduction to science fiction and they will always have a special place on my bookshelf.

Some really good ideas here.

I had forgotten about this Heinlein juvenile completely thinking I was reading it for the first time, but part way in I realized that I had read it before. The human race has finally created a source of propulsion for ships that can offer constant boost and carry its fuel. That means it's "time for the stars." Population pressure and the sort of intrepid adventurousness Heinlein always so brilliantly portrays drives our heroes out in ships pushing the speed of light knowing that relativistic effects will have them return eventually to earth after many decades have passed leaving their world immeasurably changed.

As light years stack up, both transmission time and the energy required for transmitting become intractable. This provides a way to have our heroes cut off and return to strangeness. Instead, in Time For The Stars, Heinlein allows communication by positing telepathic abilities that are instantaneous between some identical twins. The Long Range Foundation pays high fees to incent twin pairs to split up, one going on ship and one staying home. This sets the scene for taking two teenage boys who are as close as any are likely to be and first putting a spike in the relationship by offering just one the dream of a lifetime, being among the first to get to explore the stars, provided the other stays home, and then have them linked and maintain their relationship over a few years for one and a long lifetime for the other. You get to see the relationship evolve as one member of the relationship lives out his teen years and the other has great-grandchildren.

It's a gripping story, full of action like all the Heinlein juveniles, but also has touching relationship components, sometimes missing from those stories. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

2015: The kids particularly enjoyed this one.

When I was a kid Robert Heinlein WAS science-fiction. And I was a sci-fi geek. But it's been a long time since I've read him. I recently picked up Time for the Stars to see how he handled some themes that I intend to explore in my own work. It was a fun read for me, even though this is not among the front rank of Heinlein's work.
The thing that surprised me is that my exploration of the far future slammed me right back in the fifties, when I was a teenager, and when, frankly, the world sucked. Heinlein was a leader in giving women a leg up when they were mostly viewed as cleaning equipment and baby factories. In his books they are scientists, engineers, space pilots. But when times get tough the men shove them aside so they can get down the the serious business of killing aliens. And his handling of young romance is weirdly tentative and closely chaperoned. Is there anyone out there who even remembers what a chaperone is?
But its still a good read, and great fun.

Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" is an impressive work for 1956, foreseeing a world of space travel before the first human had even made it to orbit.

It's an interesting play on the relativistic effects of near-light-speed travel. But other novels written since have explored it better, notably Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

Unfortunately, the main plot device used to explore space travel is Human Telepathy, which without a basis in known physics was not interesting to me.

Additionally, the rest of the content has not aged particularly well. If you're looking for a quick read about space travel near the speed of light and human telepathy is of interest to you then it's worth a look, otherwise I would pass.

I'm not new to Heinlein, but it's only been recently when I decided to read more of his work. I recently listened to Sixth Column on audio, and found it to be decent, but nothing spectacular. That one isn't considered to be one of his juvenile novels, though, and Time for the Stars is. I was surprised with how much I liked this book, though I guess I shouldn't be; everyone else has known for decades how good a storyteller Heinlein was, so it's finally time for me to discover him.

Time for the Stars is about a pair of twins, Tom and Pat, who learn they're psychic after they're tested for a long-term science experiment. See, speaking psychically happens instantaneously, which makes it easier for communication to take place between Earth and deep-space ships. The two of them are recruited for a space journey to look for other planets to populate, one of them to travel into space, the other to stay at home to receive their messages.

Heinlein captures character and setting well, and the story features an interesting interplay of science and psychology. The story is compelling, namely because of the characters, but it has a strong "What's going to happen next?" feel to it. Heinlein examines the time dilation that occurs in ships traveling near the speed of light, so as Tom, the space twin, only ages a few years through the story, Pat ages decades. Heinlein's themes work well, too, especially considering this book was published over sixty years ago. He looks at the bonds of family, and how loving and liking your family are two different things. This being a Heinlein book, it starts off with a strong anti-tax, anti-government angle to it, but luckily that's not the point of the story.

Of course, the biggest critcism of Heinlein is his view of women. They may be smart, capable, and strong in his stories, but they're still evaluated first and foremost on their attractiveness. This could be a product of the time in which the story was written (women are also relegated to roles of cooks, caretakers, seamstresses, etc., even on a space ship), but for Heinlein to be progressive in other ways, it's disheartening to see him be backward in this one.

I'm eager to read the rest of Heinlein's juvenile works. Oh, OK, I'm interested in reading his non-juvenile books, too, but given how I remember Stranger in a Strange Land as a ponderous, overwrought, male sexual fantasy story, I'm more interested in the juveniles right now.