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Interesting story, but the drunk driver angle is irrelevant and only there for clickbait purposes. During the development of the project, a drunk driver crashed while delivering an early prototype of Sputnik that was not going to fly anyway because it was too heavy and complicated. Ok, the drunk driver "led" to the birth of Sputnik.
The paragraphs relevant to the title:

> But work on ‘Object D’ had been repeatedly delayed; as a result, the launch date had now slipped to April 1958. Fearing the Americans would soon launch again and steal the USSR’s glory, Korolev decided to push his luck: he ordered Object D, ready or not, delivered to his launch site immediately.

> That’s where our driver comes in. The Ministry of Defence Industry’s facility, glad to be rid of the bulky and troublesome package, assigned a truck driver to deliver it to the airport. Rocket engineer Boris Chertok recalls the drunken man driving “like a maniac”, unaware of the precision instruments aboard, and finally crashing into a tree.

> When Korolev finally laid his eyes on the bulky satellite, he was incandescent with rage. It was too big, too complicated and, now, too damaged. One of his engineers, Mikhail Tikhonravov, suggested they instead fly a radio beacon: a simpler, smaller package with just antennas and a transmitter, weighing much less. Then they could beat the Americans.

Who knows, maybe they were stuck in institutional thinking. The deliverable was stupid and not workable, but no one dared to say "We need to scrap this and start from the beginning.". Only when it was totally wrecked did they have a chance to do so.

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.
I was thinking the same thing.

If you're into this stuff I can highly recommend this book. Tons of fun anecdotes.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/348190.Red_Moon_Risin...

Or they can go to the source material for this clickbait article and read Rockets and People, by Chertok.
Thank you!
Early space exploration is very tightly coupled with politics. Given the USA capabilities, it can be argued that the first satellite being Soviet was a result of political bureaucracy of USA. They explicitly denied von Braun's request to fly Jupiter rocket - which were in relatively good shape - to reach an orbit. On the other hand, subsequent first man in space and first man on the Moon both shown strengths of respective countries' technology. Even after 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight healthy competition remained - it is colorfully demonstrated in the series "For All Mankind", which just had its 3rd season.

Now, 65 years later, we're getting into commercial space space. Politics get a bit less important, but there's still a long way to go.

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.
> his American counterpart, Wernher von Braun

What now? Pretty sure he was German, given the choice of a trial or working for the American space program.

As part of that deal, he became an American citizen in April 1955.

Regardless, von Braun was certainly Korolev's counterpart in the American space program.

Yup, and he suddenly wasn't a nazi anymore, too, somehow.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

Song about Von Brun

Somewhat related: one of my favorite anecdotes is that early V2-style rocket used a water/ethanol mix as fuel. Yep, these rockets ran on vodka, and as some point they had to put an additive to deter the crew from drinking the fuel.
It was actually the mom of the drunk driver that started the whole thing...
My god this is dumb. Seriously? Who believes this clickbait bs?