CAPE CANAVERAL — They lined the pier hundreds deep, a mass of Orion engineers, NASA employees and their families at Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral, tensely waiting to watch the critical next test in a project many of them have invested the better part of the last decade on.

The orange glow of the sun pouring over the horizon, they squinted into the distance at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 46, where precisely at 7 a.m. Tuesday the spacecraft that will one day take astronauts back to the moon shot up, like a mullet leaping out of the water, into the sky.

Its mission: To test abort systems, proving the craft can save its human