It’s no coincidence that the last two months have brought television shows with “Hillbilly,” “Truck Stop” and “Rednecks” in their titles. Or that seemingly half the new reality series this summer and fall are set in Texas.

Reality television is having a red-state moment, though it’s unlikely that “Truck Stop Missouri” or the Oklahoma-set “Hillbilly Handfishin’” represents life in its region any more accurately than “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” depict affairs in their coastal environs.

The latest example is “Rocket City Rednecks” on the National Geographic Channel, which combines the down-home trend with the backyard-tinkering, machine-shop ethos of shows like “Destroy Build Destroy” and “American Chopper.”

What sets “Rocket City” apart — or so its producers seem to hope — is that some of the good old boys in its cast have a lot of book learnin’. Travis Taylor, the show’s creator, central character and narrator, is an actual rocket scientist, and his friend Pete Erbach is a physicist. Both work in the aerospace industry that gives Huntsville, Ala., its nickname, Rocket City.

Taylor’s father — identified as Daddy, though his name is Charles — also has a space connection, having worked as a machinist in the Apollo program, a fact the show mentions as often as possible. Not mentioned: that Taylor works for the Army and Erbach for a military contractor.

These three, along with Travis Taylor’s nephew Michael and his friend Rog, carry out engineering projects with a “backwoods” twist. (The show’s word, not mine. Taylor calls his posse “backwoods geniuses.”)

In the first two episodes tonight, the crew sends a moonshine-powered rocket 900 feet in the air and builds lightweight underarmor for a pickup truck out of plywood, PVC pipe and empty beer cans — a patriotic effort inspired by the sight of burning Humvees in Iraq.

The projects are mildly interesting, and the beer-can armor appears to have impressive blast-absorbing capabilities. But watching pipe being cut or stills being patched is about as exciting as it sounds. The show is really about the fellowship of like-minded men and their propensity, when together, to act like teenagers. Much of the rocket episode is devoted to filling plastic bottles with alcohol and nitrous oxide and blasting them across the yard.

It’s also about the mellifluous accents and down-home wisdom ladled on by the impetuous Travis (“It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission”) and his more cautious father, as well as by Rog, who’s framed as the trailer-dwelling soul of the show. (“Come to think of it, why are we wasting all this good ‘shine?”) In a sing-song opening theme, Taylor actually says of Rog, “He went from the Alabama gifted program to that trailer in the sticks.”

It’s tempting to think that this kind of show is dreamed up by TV executives in offices in Los Angeles or New York, but as with many docu-reality series, “Rocket City Rednecks” went the other direction: Taylor had the idea and taped a short pilot to get the attention of production companies. If there’s one thing that crosses all boundaries of geography, class, education and politics — besides television — it’s self-promotion.

‘Rocket City Rednecks’

When: 9 and 9:30 tonight

Where: National Geographic Channel