This is a coming of age book set on a spaceship that travels between colonies exchanging knowledge for raw materials.
The rite of passage is to drop the teenagers on a planet for a month, and if they survive to be picked up they are judged to be adults.
It is interesting to compare this test with the one in Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein.
The main differences are -
- it is compulsory
- they test them at an earlier age
- the test is for a longer period
- the planets they are dropped on are colonised.