Skip to content

Engineering. Decisions. Consequences.

Extraordinary machines and structures, the decisions behind them, and what they cost or won. Built from the original records.

Subscribe The first films
The Hubble Space Telescope, silver and gold against black space, photographed from Space Shuttle Endeavour before the 1993 repair mission
Hubble approaching Endeavour, STS-61, 4 December 1993. Photo: NASA, public domain.

Films

The first films are in production. Each one appears here with its full list of sources when it premieres.

A bulldozer sunk deep in mud on the Alaska Highway, with soldiers working around it

Impossible BuildsAlaska Highway, 1942

How Do You Build a Road When the Ground Melts Under It?

In production. Working title.

Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps, via U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History, public domain.

The Hubble Space Telescope against black space, seen from Space Shuttle Endeavour

The RescueEarth orbit, 1990 to 1993

NASA Launched a Telescope That Couldn't See. How Did They Fix It in Orbit?

In research. Working title.

Photo: NASA, public domain.

A long timber bridge across the Sikanni Chief River, with a crowd of people walking over it and forested hills behind, 1943

Every film starts with the original record.

Investigation reports, drawings, patents, court files and engineering papers. Every source is listed with the film. Where we add our own calculations, we say so.

How we work

Sikanni Chief River bridge, Alaska Highway, British Columbia, 1943. Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps, via U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History, public domain.

Five kinds of story

Every film belongs to one of five series. Some belong to two.

  1. Impossible Builds

    A task everyone called impossible, and how it was solved anyway.

  2. The Rescue

    Something went wrong. How engineers saved the mission.

  3. Dead Ends

    It worked. So why did it never catch on?

  4. The Detail

    One small part that decided the fate of a whole system.

  5. Failures

    What gave way, why it gave way, and who could have stopped it.

New films are in production. Subscribe to see them first.

Subscribe