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Why do astronauts float? A 60-second science explainer.

Why do astronauts float? Made from a PDF teacher's guideNarration and captions · 1:00

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We gave Vividemo a 176-page teacher's guide from NASA and one request. It took three ideas from the guide — gravity, free fall and orbit — and made a narrated, captioned explainer with two animated astronauts.

By the Vividemo team · Published

Request
One message
Revisions
None
Request to finished video
34 minutes
Credits used
740
Make a video from your PDFCompare the film with the PDF

The PDF and the request

Nobody named pages or wrote a script. Vividemo read the guide, picked the passages that explain gravity, free fall and orbit, wrote the narration and dialogue, and chose how each idea would look.

  1. 1 · The PDF

    Title of the PDF: Microgravity. A Teacher's Guide With Activities in Science, Mathematics, and Technology.
    Publisher
    NASA, EG-1997-08-110-HQ
    File
    176-page PDF, 10.7 MB
    Rights
    Public domain, as stated on its title page
    Original record on the NASA Technical Reports Server

  2. 2 · The only message sent

    Turn this NASA PDF into a 60-second video explaining why astronauts float in space. Open with two astronauts trying to catch a floating snack, then use simple animations to explain gravity, free fall, and orbit. Keep it fun, scientifically accurate, and easy to understand, with English dialogue, captions, and a brief source credit at the end.

  3. 3 · The video

    60-second explainer

    • 1920×1080, narration and dialogue
    • Captions in the video, plus an SRT file
    • Source credit at the end

    Delivered 34 minutes later, with no revisions.

Have a PDF of your own? Start with one message, the way this project did.

Make a video from your PDF

From the guide to the screen

Each explanation in the film comes from a specific page of the guide. The page images are cropped from the uploaded PDF; page numbers count pages in the PDF file, with the printed page number in brackets.

  1. 01

    Gravity never turns off

    0:12–0:21

    In the guide

    “At the altitude that the Space Shuttle typically orbits Earth, the gravitational pull on the Shuttle by Earth is about 90% of what it is at Earth's surface.”

    Excerpt from the guide: two common answers to what keeps a spacecraft in orbit, “The rocket engines keep firing to hold it up” and “There is no gravity in space,” and why both are wrong; at Space Shuttle altitude Earth's pull is about 90% of what it is at the surface.
    PDF page 18 (printed page 10)

    In the film · 0:19

    Frame titled “Gravity never turns off.” Two bars compare gravity down here at your feet, 100%, with up at the space station, about 90%; the station is marked about 400 km up.
    Narration“Surprise: gravity is still there. At the space station's height, it's about ninety percent as strong as it is on the ground.”

    The guide answers a common belief, “There is no gravity in space,” with a single number: about 90% of surface gravity at orbit height. The film turns that number into two bars a viewer can compare at a glance.

  2. 02

    Everyone's falling

    0:21–0:33

    In the guide

    “No weight is measured in the last car on the right because of free fall.”

    Illustration from the guide, “Acceleration and weight”: four elevator cars with a person on a scale, showing normal weight, heavier than normal, lighter than normal, and no apparent weight in the car that is falling freely.
    PDF page 13 (printed page 5)

    In the film · 0:31

    Frame titled “Everyone's falling.” An astronaut floats above a scale inside an elevator car, next to three steps (the cable snaps, everything inside falls at the same rate, so nothing presses back on you) and a card reading “Microgravity: apparent weight ≈ 0”. The scale shows 0.
    Narration“Imagine a falling elevator. You, the scale, and the floor all drop at the same speed — so nothing presses on you. You float. That is microgravity.”

    The guide draws four elevator cars side by side. The film keeps only the last, falling car and animates it: the cable breaks, the astronaut lifts off the scale and the reading drops to zero. The closing card, “apparent weight ≈ 0”, follows the guide's definition on the same page: microgravity is when the apparent weight of a system is small compared to its actual weight.

  3. 03

    The art of missing

    0:33–0:47

    In the guide

    “At that speed and altitude, the Shuttle executes a falling path parallel to the curvature of Earth.”

    Illustration from Isaac Newton's Principia reproduced in the guide: cannonballs fired from a mountain top land farther and farther around Earth until one circles it.Excerpt from the guide: a Shuttle in a 320 kilometer orbit must travel at about 27,740 kilometers per hour; at that speed and altitude it follows a falling path parallel to the curvature of Earth.
    PDF pages 19–20 (printed pages 11–12)

    In the film · 0:45

    Frame titled “The art of missing.” A cannon on a mountain fires three arcs that land farther and farther around Earth, beside the labels “≈ 7.8 km/s sideways speed” and “≈ 90 min one lap” and the note “Newton's cannonball thought experiment, 1687.”
    Narration“The station is falling too — while racing sideways at about eight kilometers a second. Fast enough that the ground curves away as fast as it falls. Fall, and keep missing. That's an orbit.”

    The film redraws Newton's cannonball drawing as motion: each shot flies farther, and the last one keeps falling without reaching the ground.

How the 60 seconds are built

The request asked for an opening with two astronauts chasing a snack, so the film acts the question out before it asks it. Each explanation gets one idea and one picture, and the ending returns to the same cookie so the last line can answer the title.

  • The two astronauts
  • Explanation from the guide
  • Title and source credit
  1. 0:00
    Cold open

    Mira and Theo lunge for a floating cookie, nearly bump helmets, and watch it drift away. “Got it—!” “No, I've got—!” “…Where'd it go?”

  2. 0:07
    Title

    “Why do astronauts float?” The narrator sets up the question: “Astronauts float. But almost nobody can tell you why.”

  3. 0:12
    Gravity · Free fall · Orbit

    Three explanations, one idea and one picture each. Compare them with the guide.

  4. 0:47
    Payoff

    Mira catches the cookie and takes a bite. “Caught it!” “Show-off.” The narrator closes: “Not because gravity is gone. Because they're falling — together.”

  5. 0:55
    Source credit

    The guide's title and publisher, as the request asked.

Opening shot: Mira and Theo reach for a floating chocolate chip cookie inside the space station.
0:00 The cookie gets away.
Closing shot: Mira holds up the caught cookie and smiles while Theo floats beside her with his arms crossed; the caption reads “MIRA: Caught it!”
0:48 The same cookie comes back for the payoff.

What it took

Credits used by this project

740

The two 3D shots of the astronauts
611 credits
Keyframes, voices, music, and the agent's reading, planning and editing
129 credits

This is what this one video cost, not a fixed price: credits depend on length, how many shots are generated and how many changes you ask for. See pricing for plans and credit packs.

Models and tools used in this project
Part of the videoMade with
Two 3D shots of the astronauts (7 s and 6 s)Kling 4.0, starting from keyframes made with GPT Image 2.5 Flare
Title, gravity, free fall, orbit and credit scenesHyperFrames motion graphics
Narrator and two astronaut voicesElevenLabs v4
60-second instrumental scoreElevenLabs Music v2
Edit, burned-in captions and loudnessFFmpeg
Final check of the mixed audio against the scriptWhisper Large v3

Vividemo chose these models while planning; the request did not name any. Only the two 3D shots were generated as video. The diagram scenes were built as motion graphics, so their labels, numbers and lines stay exact.

What was delivered

  • MP4 video

    60 seconds, 1920×1080, 30 fps, H.264 video with stereo AAC audio.

  • Captions in the video

    Burned in, with the two astronauts' lines labeled by name.

  • SRT caption file

    A separate file you can edit or upload to a video platform.

    Download the SRT file
  • Source credit

    At the end, naming the guide and its publisher.

End card reading “Floating is just falling — together.” with a source line naming the guide, its publisher and its document number.
0:58 The source credit the request asked for.

Turn your own PDF into a video

Upload a PDF, say who the video is for and how long it should be, and describe anything you want in it — a scene, a character, a tone. Vividemo reads the document, plans the video and shows the credits it uses as it works.

Make a video from your PDFMore case studies

Source material: NASA, Microgravity: A Teacher's Guide With Activities in Science, Mathematics, and Technology (EG-1997-08-110-HQ). Created with Vividemo using NASA's Microgravity Teacher's Guide as source material. This example is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA.