Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet

Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet is a young adult science fiction novel written by Harold L. Goodwin under the pseudonym Blake Savage.

The novel was originally published by Whitman in hardcover in 1952 and reprinted in the United Kingdom later in the same year as Rip Foster Rides the Grey Planet (note the spelling of "gray/grey").

Goodwin is better known for other children's books he wrote, including the Rick Brant Science Adventure Series for Boys.

Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer (the space-going equivalent of a Marine) Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter ("Rip") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material.

The story emphasizes adventure, comedy, and narrow escapes from destruction, but hints at a geo-political situation not unlike that of the early 1950s.