There are indeed serious precedents, like the discovery of penicillin via finding a fungus contamination after a holiday - one of the largest medical breakthroughs made possible by a mess in the lab!Progress in science is often a matter of discovering what works first and discovering why it works afterward. Dr. Juanita Estevez of SpaceLab Station developed a functioning gap drive five years before she had any idea what it was.
Isn't it however more important if the results of the discovery are actually figured out, if they're used and how?
Though by some other standards, it's very possible to get fried by a lightning without having a clue about electricity.By some standards, her greatest achievement was her demonstration that it was possible to design and build a gap drive without ever having been aware that the gap existed.
These terms are often perceived as quite interchangeable.Of course, Dr. Juanita Estevez was a genius-or, as some of her colleagues insisted, "a major loon."
And it should have been the number one cause for alarm and investigation, a scientist should have heard of the law of conservation of energy... These results meant that either one of the most important laws in physics is wrong, or that it did go somewhere. Using something larger or otherwise more traceable certainly made sense in terms of figuring it out, though of course was risky too.Until coincidence intervened, however, she had no way of knowing that her test objects did indeed go somewhere, not "disassembled" but whole; the strength of the field, the potential strength of the field, the mass of the object, and the direction and velocity in which the object was moving when the field was energized (in this case, SpaceLab Station spin provided both direction and speed). She knew only that the objects were in fact gone, and that they left no measurable emissions.
And this is very close to some of the most recent research on the faster-than-light travel possibilities. It's considered a practically sure thing that it's not possible to just propel yourself to move faster than light, which pretty much eliminates anything resembling the current means of travel. So of course, science fiction and real life science go looking into circumventing this, and thus things like warp drives get their attention.The cause of the explosion became apparent when the block of titanium was found in the hole of the bulkhead: the block had come through the gap into a physical space already occupied by the bulkhead; and since the block was solider, harder, the bulkhead tore itself loose.
Of course, no one realized the event's significance until Dr. Estevez rather sheepishly admitted that the block was hers.
From that moment, it was only a matter of time before human beings began to venture beyond their own solar system.
And not only in fiction, real scientists try to think into ideas of changing the path, if it's not possible to just move so fast, notably, the Alcubierre drive idea, which basically offers to fold and then expand space around the ship, this still has multiple requirements not achievable currently, if at all, but at least appears to fit Einstein's equations, so seems theoretically possible.
Pretty normal company for a grand breakthrough - confusion, protectiveness, attempts to take it away and fear of what it may cause (frequently not too rational, and frequently very much justified).The initial research was, inevitably, confused and cautious. Dr. Estevez was chagrined by her misunderstanding of her own experiments; and embarrassment made her even more protective and territorial than she might have been otherwise. SpaceLab Station's administrator of research was torn between his desire to pursue Dr. Estevez's experiments and his wish to wrest control of the invention away from her. And the administrator of facilities was opposed to the entire project on the grounds that SpaceLab's ecology was too fragile to absorb the risk that more bulkheads or perhaps even the station's skin might be damaged.
Like in the above case with antibiotics, when it took much longer to figure out they weren't really a magic panacea pill to hand out left and right, and some still haven't caught up to that...The gap drive worked before any but the most abstruse thinkers had conceived of the gap itself. Interdimensional travel became a reality as soon as the interactions of the gap field (primarily mass, velocity, and hysteresis) were adequately quantified - long before any theoretical understanding of the gap itself achieved broad acceptance within the scientific communities of Earth.
As usual, humankind took action first and considered the consequences later.
Perhaps shouldn't have felt sad about this much, no matter how desirable it could be to understand things, at least overall, before doing them, and to look before going somewhere instead of blindly blundering in, as the first quote here suggests, this is pretty much how progress regularly happens.In a sense, she was only remembered for her mistakes: references to "tach" and "tard" endured; and the term "an Estevez" referred to "a major blunder with beneficial results."
She died an extremely bitter, as well as an extremely wealthy, woman.
cos even the best of us is a loony and the worst of us can stumble across some genius. 
