Preemptive Strike

With distinctive flair and fueled by a vivid imagination, author Scully delivers a keen-eyed tale of espionage and intrigue on a grand scale pitting the world's two great superpowers in a no-holds-barred battle for domination of space. Focused during the critical early years of the space race in the 1950s that would explode onto the front pages of newspapers everywhere and mesmerize millions with the Soviet Union's launch of Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, `Premptive Strike' presents a plausible, if (presumably) fictionalized, account of the Soviet spy network's clandestine efforts to steal essential American heat shield technology needed to protect a space vehicle's nose cone upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

This book was brought to my attention by a friend; and once I started it, I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed the blend of fact and fiction.

In the pre-Sputnik 1950s the Eisenhower administration fears the Soviets were building the capability to launch long-range nuclear missles. Moscow needed only one piece of US technology to cement its superiority.