Norman Grant (James Garner) is a former war hero turned senator who tirelessly promotes the American space program despite almost insurmountable opposition. Other principal players include John Pope (Harry Hamlin), who, after failing to win his way to Annapolis, matriculates from a Navy recruit to a naval officer, Naval Aviator, test pilot and pioneering astronaut in the company of fellow space-traveler Randy Claggett (Beau Bridges); Penny Hardesty Pope (Blair Brown), an ambitious and beautiful counsel to Senator Grant since his election and wife of John Pope; Leopold Strabismus (David Dukes), a hedonistic wheeler-dealer who hopes to capitalize on the 1947 UFO scare; German rocket scientist Dieter Kolff (Michael York), whose ideals (or lack thereof) are put to the test when he shifts his allegiance from the Nazis to the Americans; and Stanley Mott (Bruce Dern), an aeronautical engineer whose secret assignment is to make certain that men like Kolff aren't snatched up by the Soviets after the fall of Germany.