Mechanic

Join PMK's junior hosts, Jay and Elisha, for a thrilling tour of underwater and sky borne transport in Radical Rockets. The action begins on a Trident nuclear submarine, where Jay walks over missile silos, visits the ship's nerve center (and even steers it for a moment), looks through a periscope, and learns what makes a vessel that is longer than two football fields dive and surface. Meanwhile, Elisha takes a fantastic ride on a two-woman sub, then joins her cohort at NASA for some disorienting training in weightlessness, spurious motion, and flight control on the space shuttle. Along the way, there are lessons in the chemistry of booster rockets and how astronauts find leaks via computer. There's also a chapter on remote-controlled model submarines, but for the most part watching Radical Rockets is like gaining exclusive, enviable access to the biggest and coolest machines in the world. --Tom Keogh