One day, a young engineer named Igor Proestakis was on-site delivering drilling equipment when he bumped into the geologists overseeing the drilling. He told them about an idea he had to access the miners faster. It was a bold alternative to plan A: Instead of slowly drilling a new hole, what if they rapidly expanded one of the existing holes? Igor thought they might be able to do it with a tool called a cluster hammer—a special drill designed to smash right through rock. Igor didn’t expect his suggestion to go anywhere. He was one of the youngest, least experienced engineers at the site.
