Chapter Twenty-SixThe launch of Concord Space Systems' first complete Independence rocket was a spectacular failure. The entire sequence of events was visible from several places along the highway where scores of cars had pulled over to watch, but the best vantage point was from a small hill on the coastline about a mile and a half north of the launch pad. Detective Sam Kane of the Hilo Police department had climbed to the top of that hill with his wife Sunny about an hour before the scheduled launch. They were sitting on a picnic blanket, Kane with his binoculars pressed to his eyes, when the first bleats of the warning siren floated across the intervening water.
As they watched, the rocket belched out a massive cloud of flame and smoke and climbed—slowly at first, then faster and faster
