“A lot of good things happen by accident.
If Charles Goodyear hadn’t been clumsy, we wouldn’t have vulcanized rubber.”
“What?”
“Weatherproof rubber—tires, for instance, as in Goodyear. He was trying to figure out how to make rubber weatherproof, dropped this experiment on a stove by accident, and there you go, he made weatherproof rubber.”
Baffled, she rubbed her aching temple.
“I’ve completely lost the point.”
“Not everything has to be planned to work out.”
Obsession
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By Alf van Beem - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24784542
How a Wild Rocket Misfire Created Cape Canaveral
In an excerpt from Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight, author Joe Pappalardo explores how one errant rocket helped create the U.S.'s most important spaceport.