PickVidsBest Space exploration & spaceflight Videos
The 164 Space exploration & spaceflight videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 5 introductory, 29 intermediate, 127 for a general viewer, and 3 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are an explainer. What they share is that one picture or analogy is used to supply a missing concept. Channels you will keep seeing include SpaceX, Scott Manley, Everyday Astronaut.
Why Starting A Rocket Engine Is So Hard!
Tim Dodd's hour-long deep dive on how rocket engines start, from solid motors to liquid engines.
How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster
SpaceX's own compilation of failed orbital booster landing attempts, set to sound, showing the crashes before landings succeeded.
Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio)
Gil Scott-Heron's 1970 spoken-word piece, in an official audio upload.
Pulling Clear Images Directly Off Satellites | GOES-15,16,17 and Himawari 8 HRIT
The Thought Emporium shows how to receive clear images directly from GOES-15, 16 and 17 and Himawari 8 geostationary weather satellites with software-defined radio.
Turning the Sun Into a Giant Telescope with Dr. Slava Turyshev
Fraser Cain interviews JPL physicist Slava Turyshev about using the Sun's gravity as a lens to image distant exoplanets.
Using ground relays with Starlink
Mark Handley of UCL explains, with simulation visualizations, how early Starlink satellites without inter-satellite links could still give low-latency wide-area communication by hopping via ground relays.
The Greatest Shot In Television
A one-minute clip from James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections in which he walks past a Saturn V rocket and a timed take-off happens behind him in a single shot, with no green screen.
Public Service Broadcasting - Go!
Music video for Public Service Broadcasting's "Go!" from the album The Race For Space, built from NASA audio and archival material of Apollo-era voices.
SpaceX: The Biggest Money Loser in IPO History
Patrick Boyle analyzes SpaceX's IPO prospectus, covering its financials, speculative products, AI business, related-party dealings, compensation, and a governance structure with minimal shareholder rights.
Can Spinlaunch Throw Rockets Into Space?
Scott Manley looks at SpinLaunch, which aims to throw launch vehicles out of a spinning launcher at hypersonic speed.
How to Land the Space Shuttle... from Space
Bret Copeland, in an astronaut costume, gives an energetic talk on how the Space Shuttle landed from orbit, including reentry and the unpowered glide.
Toxic Propellant Hazards In Rocketry 1966 NASA
A 1966 NASA safety film teaching workers how to handle toxic rocket propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.
Soyuz Launch Escape Tower System
Short footage of the 1983 Soyuz T-10-1 pad fire, in which the launch escape tower pulled the crew away seconds before the rocket exploded.
How We Diagnosed and Fixed the 2023 Voyager 1 Anomaly from 15 Billion Miles Away
JPL's David Cummings presents at the 2025 Flight Software Workshop how the team diagnosed and fixed the 2023 Voyager 1 anomaly from billions of miles away.
Build an electroluminescent glass panel display -- an Apollo DSKY
Applied Science builds a replica Apollo DSKY using an electroluminescent driver circuit and screen-printed conductive ink, with source and PCB files published.
Power Satellites & Space Based Solar Power
Isaac Arthur explores space-based solar power, in which satellites beam energy down via microwaves to rectennas on Earth.
Apollo Core Rope Memory (Apollo Guidance Computer Part 30)
CuriousMarc's Apollo Guidance Computer restoration series looks at core rope memory, the ROM that held the Moon landing programs.
1.1 - Course outline
Course outline for Stanford's online GNSS course, introducing how GPS works and the many uses of satellite navigation.
Elon Musk - CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX | Entrepreneurship | Khan Academy
Sal Khan interviews Elon Musk in a 2013 Khan Academy entrepreneurship series.
The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine
Brian Troutwine's Code Mesh 2015 talk on the Apollo Guidance Computer.
URBEX | Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttles (Buran) in Baikonur
Urban explorers break into the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to film the abandoned Soviet Buran space shuttles.
Pinging The Voyager 2 Probe (PART 2)
Part two of EEVblog's visit to the NASA/CSIRO Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, showing the control room and how operators contact Voyager 2.
DEBUNKING STARLINK
A 43-minute skeptical critique arguing that Starlink fails to live up to its promises, covering satellite lifespan, costs, bandwidth and viability.
First-stage landing | Onboard camera
Sped-up onboard camera footage of the Falcon 9 first stage landing on a drone ship during the THAICOM 8 mission on May 27, 2016.