A choice snippet from
Chuck Yeager's October 1947 transcript, just moments before he was about to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 jet, says it all: "Hell, yes, let's get it over with." Another moment recounts Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's thoughts as they took their July 20, 1969 lunar stroll.
Dave Shephard's and Emily Sohn's "Heroes of Science" (9781438012001) includes scientific advances by Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and more; Dan Green's, Pete Katz's, and Sarah Skeate's "Heroes of Discovery" (9781438011998) includes discoveries by Johannes Gutenberg, Ada Lovelace, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Tim Berners-Lee, and more; Jade Sarson's and Dan Green's "Heroes of Flight" (9781438011981) tells of pioneer pilots George Cayley, the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Igor Sikorsky,
Chuck Yeager, and more; and Charli Vince's and Emily Sohn's "Heroes of Space" (9781438012018) explores the achievements of scientists and astronauts Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, Robert Goddard, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, and more.
The AAF was more interested in quickly achieving and perfecting supersonic flight, so
Chuck Yeager used a second faster X--1 to punch through the sound barrier--and then far beyond.
Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in X-l near Muroc, CA.
| 1947:
Chuck Yeager in his Bell X-1 rocket plane became the first man to break the sound barrier.
In 1947, US Air Force Captain
Chuck Yeager became the first pilot to officially break the sound barrier, reaching a speed of 807.2mph in the Bell X-l rocket-powered aircraft, which was designed to resemble a machine-gun bullet--a projectile known to be stable in supersonic flight.
There gathered an extraordinary band of pilots, including Second World War aces
Chuck Yeager and George Welch, who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called "the demon".
He oozes the Right Stuff of
Chuck Yeager and John Glenn, a character straight out of NASA's central casting: tall, confident, and a little cocky.
Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket plane at Mach 1 and broke the sound barrier.
Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the speed of sound and considered the finest pilot to ever have flown a plane, and Gen.
I once described to my friend Steve Albers the scene in the movie The Right Stuff in which pilot
Chuck Yeager is at almost 20 miles altitude when his jet's engine gives out.