It could be argued that the "accidental invention" that has changed human history the most was the Rephi Portals, created by Doctor Rephi Muiniche in a small research outpost run by the Orbital Consortium. Dr. Muiniche was researching the vexing problem industry had in finding a genuine "room temperature" super conductor, so Dr. Muiniche was contracted to use "quantum tunneling" by finding a way to control and direct the phenomenon so that electricity could be moved from one place to another, without passing through the intervening space. Doctor Muiniche did in fact find such a method, but the "gateways" that were necessary were large and very limited, so it seemed as if the idea would have limited usefulness. And that's where the accident came to play: somehow a hydrogen atom was accidentally introduced into the system, and was observed passing in one gate and out the other. To her final days Dr. Muiniche insisted that this was not a deliberate test on her part, and none of the other staff in the project had any warning, so it seems that this was a genuine accident. However, many have pointed out the sheer unlikeliness of such an event, which required the gateways active and under power, but no electron stream passing through, so speculation continues that somehow the good doctor planned this out. Planned or not, the potential to move larger objects was more than just a revolution, and the consortium wisely kept a very tight lid on the research until they could demonstrate instant transfer of an entire molecule with astonishing precision. The consortium restructured itself as ExtraSolar Developments, and history of course followed. Dr. Muiniche's family stated that her only regret was that she didn't live to see the first true interstellar portals go online, but she did see the Earth-Mars portals go live. And it all started in a small cramped station in low earth orbit. - From "The Benefits of Mistakes, Accidental Discoveries that Changed History" by Professor Thorvald Jorgenson; another popular postwar history. ------ The story is really an excuse to do a space station in Earth Orbit, to be honest. The station was modeled and rendered in Bryce 6.5, using mostly preset textures, or slightly edited presets. The solar panels and radiator-arrays are using my own textures. The view of Earth comes courtesy of NASA's stunning composite image, I highly recommend going to NASA's site and seeing the full size image if you have't already done so. Compositing, and other post working all done in Photoshop CS3. Thanks for taking a look, and as always comments, critiques and suggestions are definitely encouraged.