Idris Hamilton is a captain of a starship taking the last shipment of people from a polluted and dying Earth to the existing Martian colony. The ship ends up damaged and Idris seemingly dead from an act of sabotage by someone unhappy they're not getting to go. That seems like such a dumb way to spend your remaining time, so it's perfectly realistic for humanity.
Through a series of events involving the lower half of his body being sucked out a crack in the hull and his ass forming an airtight seal, something is left of Irdris' brain to be revived over 5,000 years later by what's left of humanity: 10,000 people living below the surface of the tenth planet (counting Pluto as the 9th, because this came out in the early 1970s. Idris also remarks at one point the dinosaurs went extinct because they too destroyed their environment, because the meteor strike idea wasn't around yet).
Idris eventually received a new cloned body, as he's really a guinea pig in a scientist's attempts to combat the declining lifespans of the colony. If it works for this ancient Earthman, it can work for them. But the people of the future are very different from Idris, and he quickly gets himself in to trouble being too macho and awesome. All these future people are pitiful sheep with no sense of adventure or any other drive! Their art and entertainment is bland and designed to be unchallenging! They don't even settle things violently, what the hell?
Reading Idris' critique of Minervan (the 10th planet is Minerva) society reminds me of Harry Lime's (Orson Wells) speech in The Third Man. The part about Switzerland having 500 years of peace, and producing nothing better than the cuckoo clock. Cooper seems to strongly believe in the need to expand and conquer as a motivation for progress, and if that comes with some violence or rape (Idris himself describes his first sexual encounter in his new body as a rape, with him ignoring her protests and being rough as he pleases. Naturally she's OK with it after, because he's just some ancient caveman and can't help it, yeesh), well, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
I'd say Cooper also buys into the "man on a horse" view of history, which I guess is something he shares with Heinlen. The people who settled Minerva were supposed to be journeying to nearby stars to search for inhabitable planets after things fell apart on Mars, but one charismatic guy decided they should settle on Minerva instead, blew up the ship whose captain refused, and set down a book of laws Minerva follows solidly 5,000 years later. There are people dissatisfied with this, younger people mostly, but they're ineffectual children until REAL MAN Idris Hamilton comes along to actually get things done.
The women characters are as poorly served as you'd expect given all that. There to be lusted after by Idris or remark how they feel like a full woman after he's had sex with them or whatever. It's pretty eye-rolling stuff. It's funny, because Idris doesn't seem nearly so unpleasant before his "death." He's a loyal captain who tries hard to be good at his job and doesn't ask the crew to take risks he wouldn't. After, he's just an ass. Maybe because he doesn't have anyone he cares about on Minerva like he did that crew. Or maybe something got lost in the process of reviving his brain. I don't think the book is making that argument. I think we're meant to see that Idris just recognizes he's in a bad society he needs to fix and he can't be gentle about it, but you gotta wonder.
Cooper's fairly prescient in the sense he sees humanity eventually destroying Earth because we won't moderate consumption. Indeed, Earth in his book is focused on trying to make Mars or the Moon liveable, even though that might not support more than 100,000 people, rather than focus on fixing things here. Although I get leery when the book describes the potential solutions put forth to help Earth and includes mass sterilization, given the history of such things being forced upon minorities by various white governments. Makes me wonder a little more about Cooper's politics.
I actually enjoyed the first half or so of the book. I thought maybe we'd see something about the issues between a Martian colony trying to grow and avoid Earth's pitfalls, and an embittered Earth trying to lash out or take things back. How Minerva was going to figure into that, I didn't know, but once Idris actually starts moving among Minervan society, the book takes a real nosedive.
'He had to see clearly to get back into the Dag. He shook his head violently in the spacesuit. Some of the tiny globules splattered on his visor. Some just floated about until he inhaled them, coughing a little. Well at least it was a new sensation, he told himself grimly - to choke on one's own tears.'
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