Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani [Feature Film]
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a technically rich, beautifully made documentary on ambitious hardware engineering and failure.
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.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec msadowski · 2021-11 · on “Ask HN: What are some technically inspiring movies, TV shows or documentaries?”
I highly recommend Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani [Feature Film] available on YouTube: [this video] .
Strong rec chrisdalke · 2023-01 · on “Caltech to Launch Space Solar Power Technology Demo into Orbit”
Makani (Acquired by Google and shut down) built large airplane/kites which transmitted wind power to the ground via a tether. The engineering challenges were... intense. This was all documented extensively and this documentary summarizes all the footage they took: [this video] One of my favorite engineering projects and documentaries, just because of the sheer ambition and scale, and the grit of the team to keep pushing through repeated failures. Sad the project was cancelled but it makes sense given the cost and complexity.
Strong rec pveierland · 2025-01 · on “How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear”
There's a beautiful feature film about the story of Makani. It's a great watch with plenty of technical details that follows the story from beginning to end. Available for free on YouTube: [this video]
Recommends Confiks · 2021-07 · on “Floating wind turbines could rise to great heights”
Reminds me of the incredible engineering done by Makani, as told in this 2 hours long autodocumentary [1]. They shut down in 2020 because they didn't see a path towards commercializing their airborne wind turbine. They made a non-assertion pledge on their patents, and open sourced much of their code (simulations, firmware) [2]. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Recommends gtpedrosa · 2021-11 · on “Kite Turbines”
I think the Makani documentary does a good job explaining the problem in less than 2 min [1]. [1] [this video] Regarding the size x quantity, I believe the reason lies in where the best wind is, which is usually high above the ground. The roughness of the terrain and obstacles generate shear and turbulence, which translates into more stress for the components. The higher wind has a more uniform distribution across the rotor and is higher in magnitude than in lower heights. So for small wind turbines to have access to the best wind, you would have to build expensive structures to reach there, making it infeasible. Hence kite approaches like the one posted and Makani (with different principles).
Recommends userabchn · 2023-05 · on “TV series about startup failures, portraying greedy founders, and the damages”
Not a TV series, but an interesting documentary about Makani, a failed wind energy startup funded by X: [this video]
Cites bruckie · 2020-09 · on “Makani source code released”
There's also (quite surprisingly!) a feature-length film that talks about Makani's work over the last 13 years: [this video]
Cites pas · 2020-09 · on “Makani source code released”
In the film they explain that since wind turbines extract power based on the area they sweep, their kite would be able to sweep a bigger area more easily. (No need for so much material, no need for a 150m tall tower, etc.) [this video]