Inside Mighty Machines

The first Boeing 747 took to the sky in 1969 and changed the aviation industry forever. This iconic plane ushered in a new golden age of air travel, but now it’s being grounded for good to make way for more modern, fuel-efficient aircraft. Host Chad Zdenek joins a dismantling team in Mississippi to help break down one of the retired planes and reveal the five engineering innovations that made this “Queen of the Skies” a record-breaker.

For nearly one hundred years, North Carolina’s Buck Steam Station helped drive an electrical revolution by harnessing the raw energy of coal and steam and providing power to 15 million homes and factories. But now the plant is coming down to make way for cleaner, greener, and more efficient ways of producing electricity. Before this is dismantled, host Chad Zdenek reveals the five engineering innovations that made the power plant a legend of its time.

A futuristic new mode of transportation, part plane, part boat, and part helicopter, the launch of the hovercraft in 1969 was unlike anything ever seen. After 31 years of service and a collective 2.5 million miles back and forth across the English Channel, they were decommissioned. As a salvage team prepares to take one apart to sell whatever they can for recycling, former NASA engineer Chad Zdenek examines the engineering genius involved in making the hovercraft a giant of its time.

For over 40 years, the Brent Delta oil rig stood tall in the North Sea, extracting oil and gas from beneath one of the roughest seas on the planet. Now this extraordinary machine has reached the end of its life and has been towed ashore to a decommissioning yard, where it’ll be torn apart, melted down, and sold for recycling. Engineer Chad Zdenek is on hand to help the salvage team dismantle the 40-story, 26,000-ton oil rig and uncover its five engineering innovations.

The C-5 Galaxy has been a crucial part of the U.S. Air Force for almost 50 years, serving in wars in Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan, and delivering aid to the world’s worst disaster zones. Now, maintenance personnel at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia are tearing them apart and rebuilding them for the 21st century. Former NASA engineer Chad Zdenek joins in for an up-close, hands-on look at this colossal cargo plane, revealing the five engineering innovations that made it a military legend.

For 40 years, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers have delivered U.S. military might all over the globe. But now these legendary ships are being slowly phased out for a new fleet of supercarriers. Former NASA rocket engineer Chad Zdenek spends a week aboard the USS Carl Vinson with a team of engineers, mechanics, and sailors to uncover the engineering innovations that allowed this ship to launch, land, and relaunch more planes, more quickly than ever before.