Tammy Reis, beautiful NASA Space Shuttle commander, works for the most highly funded, technologically advanced space program in the world. So why do nightmares of the Challenger disaster haunt her sleep? And why is NASA incapable of recapturing the stunning successes it once achieved?

Visionary spacecraft designer Gerry Cooper struggles at his tiny rocket company in the Mojave Desert. Who in the world wants him stopped — or dead?

One-armed billionaire playboy Laurence Poubelle hopes to build his own orbital X-15. Can his keen marketing skills overcome a nation hostile to wealth and contemptuous of adventure?

Meanwhile, the horror of the Challenger tragedy threatens to repeat itself on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Standing at ground zero, NASA engineer Jack Lundy races the countdown to prevent the deadliest space disaster of all.

While bureaucrats and businessmen publicly battle for the high ground, a young descendant of the legendary Davy Crockett secretly constructs a single-stage-to-orbit rocket deep inside an abandoned warehouse in the South Bronx. Will he and his NYU classmates survive when NORAD detects the launch that blows the lid off the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind?