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 "the Herostratus of the American space program"? Who were the personalities behind the ill-starred Orion Project? Perhaps most of all, what are the values in the name of which we reach for the Moon and, in the near future, Mars?

Peter Swirski smuggled silver across the Iron Curtain, competed as a kickboxer, trained with police officers, panelled on the BBC to audiences worldwide, and lectured on all continents of the world except Africa. Author of 19 bestselling nonfictions, praised by the likes of Nelson DeMille, David Attenborough, Jaakko Hintikka, E. O. Wilson, Howard Zinn, and others, he's been translated into ten languages and, since 2010, featured in the Canadian Who's Who.