Mark Fennell

Two men are in a lab and they've been working hard to try and make antifreeze.

They mix two chemicals together and expect to make a clear liquid.

Instead, they end up with this black mess.

It is not what they had in mind and they have to start all over, but it's late, so they decide to go home and deal with the mess in the morning.

They throw everything at this blob and just like nothing dissolves it.

My name is Mark Fennell, and this synthetic rubber would go on to be used in cars, rockets and spaceships, and ultimately would be responsible for one of the deadliest space missions in history.

But, at the time, no one saw it coming.

So this is Fiona Pepper.

Now, I get the impression that you've spent an enormous amount of the last couple of, God, months, I would say, thinking about rockets.

Were you always into rockets or is this a relatively recent development?

This is good.

So you and I are coming from almost the exact opposite starting points here because I've always been obsessed with space.

But the story that you're going to tell today is one that I had absolutely no concept of.

So we're going to meet in the middle somewhere.

Okay.

So to begin, you're going to take us back to 1926, quite literally 100 years ago, actually.

And we're in Kansas City.

Now, for people that, just to build an image in people's heads, like what is Kansas City like a century ago?

Good time to be a crazy mad scientist, yes?

Okay, so that leads us to two gentlemen, Nathan Mnookin and Joseph Patrick.