On August 5, 2010, a mine collapsed in Chile’s Atacama Desert, trapping 33 miners more than 2,000 feet underground. Nineteen days later, as rescue crews grew desperate, a 24-year-old field engineer named Igor Proestakis decided to travel to the site with what he hoped was a breakthrough idea: using a particular drilling technology, called cluster hammers, to cut through the collapsed rock. Cluster hammers had never been used to such depths — and never in Chile at all — but in a striking display of openness, the managers of the rescue operation tried the suggestion, which proved to be a key decision in bringing all 33 miners to safety.