{"id":4559,"date":"2013-12-29T19:31:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T23:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.urbin.net\/blog\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2013-12-29T19:31:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-29T23:31:30","slug":"rocket-city-rednecks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/technology\/rocket-city-rednecks\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket City Rednecks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I discovered this show by reading one of Travis Talyor\u2019s non-fiction books,\u00a0A New American Space Plan<\/a>. \u00a0 While this post is about the TV show, pick up this book as well. \u00a0It\u2019s a well laid out case of why American should be serious about getting into space again and how to do it.<\/p>\n

Also take the time to watch the show,\u00a0Rocket City Rednecks<\/em>, either by\u00a0streaming<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0optical disk<\/a>. \u00a0 This show is about five self-identified Rednecks from Huntsville, AL, two of which are actual rocket scientists from NASA who actually build working gear. \u00a0Really cool gear that works. \u00a0OK, it works most of the time, but even when they fail, they learn from their mistakes so then can do it better the next time. \u00a0That is really one of the important lessons. \u00a0It\u2019s OK to fail, as long as you learn from it. \u00a0 Most of the gear is built in Travis\u2019 father\u2019s garage. \u00a0 Charles Travis is a retired NASA machinist who worked on the Apollo program, and one of the five Rednecks who star in the show.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve watched about a third of the first season so far, and they have built some really nifty gear so far. \u00a0These include a still in order to build a moonshine fueled rocket, the actual rocket, a balloon based observation platform, a working submarine, a radio telescope array using 18\u2033 satellite dishes, under vehicle armor capable of withstanding an IED blast (they drove the pickup truck away afterwards), and a working \u201cIron Man\u201d suit, that had armor capable of \u00a0stopping 9mm handgun rounds, lifting over 100 pounds with a single arm and fired rockets!<\/p>\n

Just to add to the overall coolness of this, most of their projects are done over a single weekend with a budget of about $1000. \u00a0Keep in mind that three of these Rednecks are current or former NASA employees. \u00a0The two active ones have eight advanced degrees in science between them (Travis has five post-graduate degrees. \u00a0For those of you who know me, yes, that is one more than Amy currently has). \u00a0Rog (Rednect #4) doesn\u2019t have any advanced degrees, but he does have a genius level IQ, and Michael (Travis\u2019 nephew) is mechanically inclined and studying to be a machinist. \u00a0 Still, if you know basic work working, basic welding, how to solder two wires together, and some basic programming, you and your friends could try some of this stuff.<\/p>\n

Which is kinda the whole idea of the show. \u00a0To get kids off the XBox and out there building go carts, rockets, radio sets and other cool gear.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of show my dad would have loved. \u00a0He was 22 year veteran of the Army Corps of Engineers, and would have been out teaching kids how to to build the things the Rednecks are building.<\/p>\n

Originally published at Urbin Technology<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I discovered this show by reading one of Travis Talyor\u2019s non-fiction books,\u00a0A New American Space Plan. \u00a0 While this post is about the TV show, pick up this book as well. \u00a0It\u2019s a well laid out case of why American should be serious about getting into space again and how to do it. Also take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,30],"tags":[349,649,695,759,786],"class_list":["post-4559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-tech","category-technology","tag-gear","tag-redneck","tag-science","tag-technology","tag-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pab4zg-1bx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}