Coming Home from Space: The Challenge of Re-Entry

In the mid-1960's, after the success of Project Mercury, the need to master long-duration missions and extravehicular activity resulted in Project Gemini, which provided the seasoning in men and machines that led to the first American spacewalk... and paved the way for ultimate victory in the race to the Moon. This 3-disc set chronicles America's bold new program with comprehensive footage from the film and videotape records of Project Gemini. Includes original Project Gemini documentary, complete 16mm onboard film from all the flights, footage from each mission preparation, launch and recovery. With rare bonus footage of the Gemini spacecraft, Titan launch vehicle, crew training activities and more. Runtime is over 6 hours. NOTE: Some of the tracks do not contain audio.

Top scientists want to build a nuclear bomb-powered spaceship to visit Mars and the planets.

Explores the plans for the construction of the monumental dam on China's Yangtze River, the structure that when completed in 2009 will become the Three Gorges Dam. It is slated to be 610 feet high, 1.3 miles across, creating a reservoir 400 miles and the largest power plant in the world.

By the end of the Ice Age - only ten thousand years ago - many great mammals had died out. The woolly mammoth, the dire wolf, the saber-tooth cat and others disappeared as a result of severe climatic changes that engulfed the planet. And yet other animals persevered. Today, they go on in dwindling numbers as the last of the Ice Age survivors. Scientists are piecing together their past while others work to safeguard the future of these living relics. Despite climate changes over the past 15,000 years and human predation, their descendants persist in a few unspoiled regions of the globe.

Filmed by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer Al Giddings, this timeless program takes a stirring look at the largest, tallest, longest-living things on the planet: trees. Stunning location footage captures the variety and the grandeur of the Pacific Northwest, the Florida Everglades, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Great Sonoran Desert. Quotations from Sierra Club founder John Muir and others who revere nature are interwoven with information on topics ranging from the function of forest ecosystems, to the effects of deforestation, to the integration of parks into urban landscapes.

While London was a swamp, and Paris, a fishing village, Istanbul, then known as Constantinople, reigned for a thousand years as the world's richest city. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it amassed more gold than both continents combined, and safeguarded Christendom's most sacred relics, including the True Cross and heads of the Apostles. Immerse yourself in the city that has endured more warfare than any other place on Earth: Istanbul. The world's oldest city, which spans the continents of Europe and Asia, holds many stories of intrigue. Intrigue in Istanbul is your ticket to one of the most subversive, decadent and magnificent journeys in history.

Documentary that takes a scientific and historical look at the story of Moses. Uses archaeological evidence from the stables of Ramses II to little-known Egyptian texts to seek answers to questions about Moses and his origins.

A look back at the origins of rocket science and forward to the cutting edge technology of reusable rockets and shuttles. Using computer animation, the program also explores the future of space travel that may some day carry commercial passengers or "tourists" into space.

In June 1942, Japanese bombers tried to level the American presence on Midway Island in a bid to steam unimpeded toward the U.S. mainland. Yet the U.S. Navy had two aces up its sleeve: advance knowledge of Japanese plans and a dive-bomber that was nearly invulnerable to attack. When the smoke cleared after the U.S. ambush, four Japanese aircraft carriers -- the Kaga, the Soryu, the Hiryu and the Akagi -- lay on the ocean floor. The program shows how the U.S. Navy and private enterprise teamed up on a 1999 expedition that solved a half-century of military mystery: where exactly did the Japanese ships go down?

Documentary that explores the birth and growth of satellite espionage.

A super laser was a planet-destroying super weapon that often used several separate "super laser beams" combined together as a single beam. This devastating device was designed to destroy planets with one shot at full power. There were also smaller-scale super lasers of lesser power designed for use against capital ships. Yet another small-scale super laser was a type used by the Geonosians in their droid factories to melt iron ore.

The film presents compelling evidence that Altlantis wasn't so far away after all, but what it omits is just as compelling. Although Plato’s account of Atlantian masonry, consisting of red, white and black stones, was a visually perfect match for the modern walls of the Minoan excavation site favored by the film, and his account of a sea made impassable by small islands of mud could, in fact, be a description of the rafts of pumice left by the catastrophic eruption of an ancient volcano there, little mention is made of Plato's specific account of where Atlantis was or the common root that links Atlantis to the Atlantic ocean. Also omitted is Plato's chronology placing the sinking of Atlantis in the same time frame as the end of the last ice age which caused the inundation of huge expanses of once fertile lands. Is "Atlantis: The Evidence" a thinly disguised example of Eurocentrism in the media? Watch Discovery: Atlantis for a more comprehensive view on an age-old debate.

Documentary of Apollo 11 mission from NASA footage.

Apollo 16 mission from NASA footage.

At an isolated outpost in the Arctic, the pioneering spirit of the Space Race clashes with the suspicions of the Cold War.

Documentary of an underwater archaeological expedition led by French explorer Franck Goddio that explores the sunken ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt, where Cleopatra made her home over 2,000 years ago. The underwater exploration team uses advanced scientific methods to locate the remains of Cleopatra's sunken palace as well as the entire submerged Royal Quarters in the harbor of modern Alexandria. Also uses re-enactments, computer graphics and animation to present a picture of Cleopatra's life in ancient Alexandria.

Documentary looking at the ways which computer on-line services and the Internet have evolved, how they have been applied and the problems they can cause.

Documentary exploring the hundreds of species of life that thrive in total darkness at the hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Ocean Ridge, several miles below the ocean surface. Little food filters down from the surface and there is no sunlight to support photosynthesis.

Documentary reveals how fireworks are made, how they create their effects and how pyrotechnicians design and execute firework displays.

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