I made some mistakes in the past. I never made a half-a-billion dollar mistake.
Neither did Chris Lewicki, but he came awfully close.
I just read this delightful account of how Lewicki almost fried the innards of the Spirit rover, destined for Mars, during an engineering test that took place just weeks before the rover was launched.
I can only imagine the sinking feeling in his stomach he must have felt when he thought that the rover was ruined. My mistakes never came close in value, but the sensation is uncomfortably familiar.
Fortunately, in his case, the disaster never actually materialized. In simple terms, yes, he plugged a cord into the wrong outlet, but fortunately, the other end of the cord was not plugged in.
To this day, Lewicki must feel like one of the luckiest persons on the planet.
The illustration is from his blog post, but its appearance suggests that it might have been produced by DALL-E. Or maybe Midjourney or Stable Diffusion? The style looks very reminiscent of AI-produced cartoon images.