Earth Satellites And The Race For Space Superiority.

Ace Books D-239, copyright 1957 by A. A. Wyn, Inc., 23 West 47th Street, New York. The cover credits “G. Harry Stine, Rocket Engineer, White Sands Proving Ground,” and the back cover carries a quotation from Major General Bernard Schriever, U.S.A.F., on “space superiority.” The book is dedicated to Esther C. Goddard, “who understood her pioneer husband’s secret dream and passed it on to others, including me.”

The “About the Author” page describes Stine as a 29-year-old rocket engineer, magazine writer and science-fiction author (as “Lee Correy”) working with the planning staff at White Sands, who had taken part in hundreds of rocket firings including the Aerobee-Hi, and who wrote a monthly rocketry column for Mechanix Illustrated. A short opening, “Behind the New Satellites,” says the Earth is about to have more than one moon, and Chapter One (“About the Size of a Basketball…”) opens with a Vanguard launch at Cape Canaveral. A disclaimer on the copyright page says the opinions are the author’s and not those of the Navy, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government, and that all designs were developed from public-domain material. The cover blurbs ask whether the Russians are ahead and whether America can survive without space superiority.