space exploration

Urban explorers break into the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to film the abandoned Soviet Buran space shuttles. The video shows the decaying orbiters and the dangerous trip to reach them.

In her final days as ISS commander, Sunita Williams gives an extensive tour of the station's modules and research facilities, narrating the work done aboard.

A BBC Four documentary following Alan Bond and Reaction Engines as they pursue the Skylon spaceplane and its SABRE engine. It covers the history from HOTOL and the heat-exchanger breakthrough.

A 1968 NASA film from the US National Archives explaining why the US needed a nuclear rocket and how the engine works. It also shows combined nuclear and chemical stages for a manned Mars mission.

A tour of Christian Schallert's 24 square meter apartment in Barcelona, designed so that it looks like an empty cube until he builds the furniture he needs. Kirsten Dirksen shows how the space is transformed for cooking, sleeping and dressing.

A NASA video on the 29 days after the James Webb Space Telescope's launch, when thousands of parts must deploy in sequence on the way to its destination a million miles away.

A documentary following Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society as they push the Mars Direct plan for sending humans to Mars using current technology and local resources. It also covers the clash with NASA's more expensive approach.

Trailer for the documentary It's Quieter in the Twilight, shown at the Boston SciFi Film Festival. The film follows the engineers who keep the Voyager spacecraft running.

A Channel 4 Equinox documentary on the NK-33 engines built for the Soviet N1 moon rocket and how they ended up in the USA. It includes rare footage and interviews with veterans of the early Soviet space program.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

NCommander investigates why Space Cadet Pinball disappeared from Windows Vista, building on Raymond Chen's explanation about 64-bit incompatibility. He tests it on 64-bit Windows including Itanium and walks through the debugging.

NASA Goddard recreates the Apollo 8 Earthrise moment using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, narrated by Andrew Chaikin and synced with the astronauts' recorded conversation. It marks the flight's 45th anniversary.

The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.

Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

A 1966 NASA safety film teaching workers how to handle toxic rocket propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. It explains the hazards of these corrosive, flammable and toxic chemicals and what to do after contamination.

CuriousMarc's Apollo Guidance Computer restoration series looks at core rope memory, the ROM that held the Moon landing programs. Mike Stewart builds a custom reader to recover lost AGC programs.

A short film in which friends build the first true-to-scale model of the solar system, with full planetary orbits, on a Nevada dry lakebed. It conveys the real distances and sizes involved.

An hour-long, carefully sourced video essay from Ahoy asking what counts as a video game and which one was truly first. It examines Tennis for Two, Spacewar, Pong, the Brown Box and a 1947 CRT device.

Kirsten Dirksen visits architect Gary Chang's 32 square meter Hong Kong apartment, which he has redesigned over decades. Sliding walls and transformable furniture turn it into 24 different room configurations.

Adam Curtis's 2016 BBC documentary HyperNormalisation, about 160 minutes long. It cuts together roughly forty years of politics, finance and technology to argue that people have retreated into a simplified fake world.

A long video essay on MyHouse.wad, a Doom II mod uploaded by an anonymous user that hides unsettling secrets in its walls. It tells the story of the map, its mystery and its liminal horror.

Oracle Red Bull Racing follows a single front suspension bolt through its life, from sketch and drawing through machining, testing, assembly and racing.

Joe Kava, VP of Google's Data Center Operations, gives a short tour of a Google data center. He covers security, sustainability and the core infrastructure architecture.