Jimmy Smith, a washed-up US Navy carrier pilot, has signed on to jockey a new type of space fighter, moored at the International Space Station. He soon learns that the ISS now hosts a hypersonic missile, poised in low earth orbit for a preemptive strike on terrorists. Now the mullahs are heaving kinetic kill vehicles at the fragile dragonfly of the ISS, leaving the interceptor pilots to deal with the improbability of dropping a nuclear ramjet into atmospheric reentry, guiding it to target at hypersonic velocities, getting off an aimed shot, and avoiding lethal clouds of orbital debris.
Jimmy Smith, a washed-up US Navy carrier pilot, has signed on to jockey a new type of space fighter, moored at the International Space Station. He soon learns that the ISS now hosts a hypersonic missile, poised in low earth orbit for a preemptive strike on terrorists. Now the mullahs are heaving kinetic kill vehicles at the fragile dragonfly of the ISS, leaving the interceptor pilots to deal with the improbability of dropping a nuclear ramjet into atmospheric reentry, guiding it to target at hypersonic velocities, getting off an aimed shot, and avoiding lethal clouds of orbital debris.