World War II and the advent of the Cold War led the U.S. government to underwrite basic scientific research that could be applied to military purposes. Because the U.S. Navy was concerned about the effect of nuclear radiation on its wireless radio communication system, it funded studies in astronomy and aeronomy--the examination of the earth's atmosphere--at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC. Wartime advances in rocketry and electronics enabled physicists and engineers to study non-visible radiation at ever greater distances from the earth's surface. These studies resulted in more sophisticated views of the composition of the atmosphere and of solar radiation, and in the revelation of the presence of stellar X-ray radiation between 1946 and the early 1960's. By the latter period, however, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to eclipse NRL's pre-eminence in space science. David DeVorkin, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, recorded five sessions with the men at the NRL who pioneered the sciences of aeronomy and X-ray astronomy: Herbert Friedman, Edward T. Byram, Talbot A. Chubb, and Robert Kreplin. DeVorkin was particularly interested in how technologies and techniques developed for one purpose crossed disciplinary boundaries to affect or create others. Participants detailed how they adopted, applied, or improved on extant technologies for their hybrid research; throughout the sessions there is ample visual documentation of artifacts and working equipment used at the NRL. The video sessions were arranged in two collection divisions: 1) X-ray astronomy and 2) aeronomy.