In 1911, a young pilot's experimental airplane lost power and barely survived a crash landing. The culprit wasn't a broken fuel line or a snapped wing. It was a single mosquito, sucked into the carburetor and starving the engine of fuel. That microscopic bug pushed Igor Sikorsky toward the multi-engine airplane, and this episode follows a man who lived three distinct aviation lifetimes across two countries and one violent revolution.

It traces a da Vinci-and-Jules-Verne childhood in Kiev, the helicopter he built in 1909 and had the discipline to abandon because the engines weren't ready, the world's first four-engine aircraft, and the 30-year wait before technology finally caught up to his original dream. Along the way: escape from revolution, near-ruin in America, a rescue bankrolled by a famous pianist, and a devout inner life that saw the human spirit triumphing over the very machines of war he built.

• The mosquito in the carburetor: the single point of failure that sold him on engine redundancy
• Knowing when to quit: why he dismantled his 1909 helicopter instead of forcing an impossible engine
• Solving asymmetrical thrust: how the Russky Vityaz became the first successful four-engine plane in 1913
• Losing everything: revolution, exile, and the pianist Rachmaninoff's check that saved the company
• The 30-year payoff and a contested legacy: the helicopter, the rescue chopper, and the bomber named for him