The Orion Project

During a critical phase of the Cold War, NASA launches a mission which culminates decades of clandestine development of a nuclear pulse-driven spacecraft—a super-rocket propelled by atom bomb explosions. Held back by the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Orion is revived in secret and launched in 1973 under the guise of a Skylab supply mission.

What really happened to the mission described as “the worse disaster in the history of NASA”? What role was played by the pilot Jack Trew, vilified as “...