In 1958, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson became a lead scientist on a team that ventured to launch a 5,000-ton spaceship to Mars almost a decade before man had walked on the moon. Dyson believed that he himself would be space bound, heading through the Milky Way, by 1970. ATOMIC DREAM explores the life of 89 year-old Freeman Dyson. We learn about Dyson the man through a period in his life that he calls his happiest — working on Project Orion to design a nuclear-bomb propelled, interplanetary spaceship. In 1961, as his worries about nuclear fallout grew, Dyson had to decide if he would support the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, effectively signing a death sentence for Project Orion and ending his dreams of traveling the solar system.