Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet

"Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet" is a young adult science fiction novel written by Harold L. Goodwin under the pseudonym Blake Savage. Lt. Rip Foster, a freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer (the space-going equivalent of a Marine), already having to deal with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force crewman (more equivalent to the Navy than to the Air Force) with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it back to Earth for use as fissionable material. However, the totalitarian Connies have their own plans for the asteroid. "Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet" emphasizes action and adventure, and hints at a geo-political situation not unlike that of the early 1950s.