The Vintage Space

The Vintage Space is the channel of Amy Shira Teitel, a historian and author who writes about spaceflight. It covers mid-century history, mostly about science and technology.

Videos tell the stories of real missions, spacecraft and people, from Apollo and Soyuz to the race to build the atomic bomb. Long-form videos come out every few weeks, and some are very long deep dives. Amy explains the technical decisions as well as the human stories, using archive footage and documents. The channel also posts short videos five days a week, which are a quick way into the subject. Recent long videos have looked at the nuclear age and returning to the Moon.

Some highlights include:

A very detailed retelling of Apollo 13 and how engineers on the ground helped bring the crew home.

A look at the Moon missions that were planned but cancelled when the Apollo programme ended early.

The story of the Soyuz 1 mission and the technical problems that led to its loss.

The channel has over 460,000 subscribers.

The Vintage Space shows how aerospace engineering decisions play out in the real world, including what happens when things go wrong. The Apollo 13 story is a classic example of engineers solving problems under pressure. It suits anyone interested in aerospace engineering, space science or the history of technology. It also shows how politics and budgets shape what engineers are allowed to build.