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Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani [Feature Film]

X, The Moonshot Factory · documentary · Watch on YouTube

Renewables, batteries & storageAviation & aerospace engineeringStartups & entrepreneurship

What it is

A feature-length film by the Makani team chronicling their thirteen-year effort to build energy kites that harvest wind power, with footage from test sites in Hawaii, California and Norway. It shows the engineering, the team and the eventual shutdown.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as a technically rich, beautifully made documentary on ambitious hardware engineering and failure.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “I highly recommend Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani [Feature Film] available on YouTube”

    Recommended as technically inspiring film about Makani

    msadowski, 2021-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What are some technically inspiring movies, TV shows or documentaries?”

  2. “One of my favorite engineering projects and documentaries, just because of the sheer ambition and scale”

    Documents Makani's ambition and repeated failures with extensive footage

    chrisdalke, 2023-01 · Strong recommendation · in “Caltech to Launch Space Solar Power Technology Demo into Orbit”

  3. “There's a beautiful feature film about the story of Makani. It's a great watch with plenty of technical details”

    Beautiful full-story film with plenty of technical detail

    pveierland, 2025-01 · Strong recommendation · in “How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear”

  4. “incredible engineering done by Makani, as told in this 2 hours long autodocumentary”

    Two-hour autodocumentary of Makani's engineering and shutdown

    Confiks, 2021-07 · Recommendation · in “Floating wind turbines could rise to great heights”

  5. “I think the Makani documentary does a good job explaining the problem in less than 2 min”

    Explains the airborne wind problem in under two minutes

    gtpedrosa, 2021-11 · Recommendation · in “Kite Turbines”

  6. “an interesting documentary about Makani, a failed wind energy startup funded by X”

    Documentary about failed X-funded wind startup Makani

    userabchn, 2023-05 · Recommendation · in “TV series about startup failures, portraying greedy founders, and the damages”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: makani, energy kites, hardware engineering, x moonshot, wind power, startup failure

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