On the morning of May 4, 1988, the air in Henderson, Nevada, was clear and dry. At the Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada plant, known as PEPCON, a small welding fire began. It was a minor incident, until the wind carried it toward the storage tanks.
PEPCON was one of only two American producers of ammonium perchlorate, the oxidizer that powered the solid rocket boosters of the Space Shuttle. The plant held some 4,500 tons of the granular, white compound. It is not an explosive by itself, but a vigorous oxidizer. In the presence of flame, it becomes something else entirely.
The first explosion was a deep, percussive thump that rattled windows in Las Vegas, 10 miles away. The second was different. A seismograph at the University of Nevada, Reno, registered a magnitude 3.5 event. A column of orange and black smoke, laced with chlorine gas, rose 7,000 feet into the sky. The shockwave shattered glass, buckled steel, and tore buildings from their foundations. Two people died, nearly 400 were injured, and damage exceeded $100 million.
The event was a paradox of peacetime. The fuel for a vehicle of exploration, stockpiled in the desert, had enacted a violence reminiscent of war. It laid bare the chain linking a high-tech national program to an industrial park in a suburb, and the immense, latent energy required to briefly defy gravity.