One that I think would qualify for HN is their set from last August on the Large Hadron Collider:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_co...

When is that coming back online?

Latest news suggests mid-November: http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2009/090716.html

For me the closest to hacks was this one:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/at_work.html

definitely, explore it, you'll find hacks you won't believe. You can double my income tax if all the money goes to another project like this, perhaps a mission to Mars.

For instance, check out the Launch Escape System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_spacecraft#Launch_Escape.... Plenty of hacks, in particular the Q-Ball cover.