I'm sorry if people see it as click bait, that was not my intention when I wrote this! I just thought it was hilarious anecdote about the birth of the space rac

I'm sorry if people see it as click bait, that was not my intention when I wrote this! I just thought it was hilarious anecdote about the birth of the space race. If the Russians had stuck with Object D, they could well have been beaten by the Americans. I just love this story about how a banal incident determines history. So, in a way, the vodka-swilled driver helped the engineers abandon complexity and focus on simplicity, which ultimately won the day. You can see this kind of approach today at SpaceX, which is constantly trying to simplify all elements of its technology.