Chuck Yeager: First Person to Break the Sound Barrier Chuck Yeager: First Person to Break the Sound Barrier By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | June 11, 2014 04:28am ET MORE Chuck Yeager continued to act as a flight consultant for the air force until his last flight on October 14, 1997. Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office Chuck Yeager was an American test pilot who was the first person to break the sound barrier — the point where a speeding object (such as an airplane) passes the speed of sound. Yeager made his history-setting flight on Oct. 14, 1947 in an airplane he dubbed Glamorous Glennis, after his wife. The Bell X-1 rocket plane (which today hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum) passed Mach 1 following a drop from a B-29 airplane. The monumental "top secret" event was kept classified until 1948, but once it hit the public airwaves, Yeager became a celebrity.

He also received a prestigious aviation award called the Collier Trophy, which called his flight the greatest achievement in aviation since the Wright brothers first took flight in 1903. War fighting and escape Yeager had a colorful aviation career long even before breaking the Mach barrier. Born in 1923 in a small town near Hamlin, West Virginia, Yeager grew up working on his father's pickup trucks, according to Yeager's website. His high school graduation in 1941 took place just six months before the United States entered World War II that December. By that point, Yeager was a young member of the Army Air Corps. He was tapped for flight training in July 1942, and quickly distinguished himself among his peers. "He had remarkable 20/10 eyesight, tremendous physical coordination, and an uncanny ability to stay focused in stressful situations. Those traits coupled with a competitive streak and his understanding of machinery caught the attention of his instructors," his website stated. Yeager received his pilot wings in 1943 and served in WWII, flying 64 combat missions for 270 hours in Europe.

He was shot down on March 5, 1944, over Bordeaux, France, but with the assistance of French resistance movement the Maquis, Yeager made it back to neutral territory a few weeks later. USAF Capt. Charles E. Yeager (shown standing with the Bell X-1 supersonic rocket plane) became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound in level flight on Oct. 14, 1947. Credit: United States Air Force Archive Breaking the barrier Following the war, one of Yeager's assignments as an assistant maintenance officer in the fighter section at the Flight Test Division in Wright Field, Ohio. Yeager's website describes the location as "the center of Army Air Forces R and D [research and development]", and said his main assignment was to fly the fighters being developed there. His flight skills got him some attention: he was asked to fly in air shows and also took part in service trials at Edwards Air Force Base (then called Muroc Army Air Field). Then in 1947, the young Yeager was picked to try to break the sound barrier . Yeager's work on Glamorous Glennis began with three glide flights, then powered flights starting Aug. 29.

He had trouble keeping the plane straight due to pitch problems, particularly on a flight Oct. 10 where he briefly lost pitch control completely. Another crew member suggested that Yeager should move the X-1's horizontal tail very slightly to keep his airplane under control. On his next flight, Oct. 14, Yeager tried out the tail idea at 0.83, 0.88 and 0.92 Mach and found the method worked. "At 42,000 feet, [Yeager] relit a third chamber of his engine," his website stated. "The X-1 Glamorous Glennis rapidly accelerated to 0.98 Mach and then, at 43,000 feet, the needle on his Machmeter jumped off the scale." The speed of sound, Mach 1, is about 758 mph (1,220 kph) at sea level, and decreases with altitude.) After the test Yeager continued his flight testing duties for many years after breaking the sound barrier, including testing Lockheed’s XF-104, an aircraft that was capable of going double the speed of sound.

But Yeager had a couple of near misses as he tested the aircraft, which was always a risky endeavor as he was among the first to fly these types. In December 1953, Yeager turned off his Bell X-1A engine as planned at 76,000 feet. The aircraft began to roll and yaw, then quickly fell out of control despite Yeager's attempts to correct the issue. Yeager managed to pull out safely at 25,000 feet — after falling more than 50,000 feet. Ten years later, Yeager piloted a Lockheed NF-104 aircraft that crashed, but he managed to parachute out safely. "The veteran Air Force pilot suffered burns on his face and neck, apparently from the ignition of pure oxygen in his mask, but otherwise was not injured seriously," the L.A. Times reported at the time . The crash was depicted in both the book and movie versions of "The Right Stuff." (Yeager played a small part in the movie, as the bartender at Pancho Barnes’ Happy Bottom Riding Club.) Yeager's last active duty flight was on Feb.

25, 1975, in an F-4C Phantom II, but he remained an active consulting test pilot for decades after that. In 2012, the then 89-year-old Yeager flew in the back seat of the F-15D to re-enact the 65th anniversary of his record-setting flight. Editor's Recommendations Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier? Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier? Chuck Yeager and the Bell X-1 with paper tape of the supersonic flight profile (Photo credit: NASA) We all know the story of how Captain Chuck Yeager opened the throttles of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis in October, 1947. Breaking the sound barrier was to aviation what Neil Armstrong's first step was to the space program: No matter how many others went higher or faster later, it will always be that seminal, unassailable "first" that can never be topped. Yeager's name will always sit atop every list of record-breaking pilots, up there by himself in his own special stratosphere. But: Was he really the first pilot to fly faster than sound?

Plenty of stories out there say Yeager wasn't the first. How do we know what to believe? Do we accept the popular official story, or do we give credibility to the other claimants with good evidence of their own? Today we're going to point our skeptical eye at some of these other claims, and see who really deserves the credit. There are certainly many pilots who approached the sound barrier but didn't live to tell about it. The years preceding Yeager's flight were among the most exciting in aviation history, as World War II drove aeronautic advancement like never before. Planes that had been shot down often entered the transonic realm as they plummeted, and were torn apart by the resulting shockwaves. Dive bombers had to have special air brakes developed to prevent them from breaking up, which sometimes happened anyway. Of the many pilots who toyed with the sound barrier in WWII — all unintentionally, of course — most never survived the adventure. During WWII, engineers didn't yet have any flight test experience that taught us how to design aircraft capable of supersonic speed. Even in 1947, Yeager's X-1 was designed after a 50 caliber bullet, known to be stable at supersonic speeds.

WWII had seen widespread use of the German V-2 rockets, which were supersonic, so we knew such flight was possible. But the V-2 was ballistic, it didn't require a controllable airframe; and designing a supersonic controllable airframe was the problem for aeronautical engineers. The main issue is called shock stall, and it's what happens when a control surface approaches the speed of sound. A shockwave forms around the control surface, rendering it useless, and the pilot has no way to control the aircraft. Propeller aircraft can never reach the sound barrier, since the tips of propeller blades hit the sound barrier before the rest of the plane does. The propeller blades go into shock stall, and the plane can no longer accelerate. There are many claims of propeller driven dive bombers breaking the sound barrier during WWII, but these have to all be considered implausible. Approaching the sound barrier, an airplane is already well above its terminal velocity, the speed at which drag matches the acceleration imparted by gravity. Propellers are shock stalled, and there is neither thrust nor gravity available to accelerate a diving airplane past a certain point.

As any aircraft approaches the speed of sound, airflow over some parts of the plane will exceed Mach 1 and create shockwaves. These shockwaves cause intense buffeting. Many propeller driven WWII fighter planes, including the Supermarine Spitfire, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and the North American P-51 Mustang, experienced these effects at Mach 0.85. Similarly, jet engines of the day were not designed to work with supersonic airflow entering through the compressor vanes; such engines would flame out. However, one particular fighter plane of WWII was not driven by either propellers or jets: The German rocket powered Messerschmitt 163 Komet. The Komet was designed by the great Alexander Lippisch, a pioneer of delta wings and ramjets. By the end of WWII, Lippisch had a test glider of a supersonic ramjet powered aircraft actually undergoing flight tests. He understood the requirements of supersonic flight. The Komet was designed to fly as fast as possible while staying under the critical limits at which trouble happens. The Komet's delta wing was exceptionally thin.

This delays the onset of shock stall over the primary airfoil, and allowed the Komet to remain stable up to Mach .85. However, Lippisch had no answer for shock stall at the control surfaces on the trailing edge of the delta wing, and so the Komet was destined to remain subsonic. In combination with the relatively low 3,800-lb thrust of the Komet's Walter rocket engine (about half the power of Yeager's X-1), the Komet had little expectation of going supersonic, except in an uncontrollable, powered dive which would probably be unrecoverable. Nevertheless, stories persist of Komet pilots breaking the sound barrier, years before Yeager did. Komet test pilot Heini Dittmar, flying an early prototype in 1941, reached an officially measured speed of 1,004 kph in level flight. This was probably around Mach .95 but we don't know for sure since the flight was classified until after the war and the altitude is unknown. However, Dittmar made the flight at partial throttle to avoid buffeting, using an engine only half as powerful as that which went into production.

But just because later versions were more powerful doesn't mean they wouldn't run into exactly the same limitations at the same top speed. One unofficial report claims that Dittmar hit 1,130 kph in 1944 (Mach 1.06), and another states that in a steep dive he created sonic booms that were heard on the ground. However, these stories first appeared in 1990 book written by Dittmar's friend Mano Ziegler, and do not have contemporary corroboration or documentation. But the best evidence against Komets breaking the sound barrier is the fact that the Allies did capture all of the program's classified data, and no supersonic flights were ever recorded, even in secret. Claims you'll find on the Internet that "Komet pilots routinely broke the sound barrier" cannot be given much weight, given the aircraft's limitations well understood by Alexander Lippisch. As an aircraft approaches the speed of sound, the shockwave over the wing moves the center of lift backwards and the plane noses down. This is a condition called Mach tuck.

Normally you'd pull back on the stick to correct this, but conventional elevator controls on the trailing edge of the tailplane would be unable to get any bite, since the elevators would be shock stalled. The only way out of Mach tuck is to use an all-moving tailplane to trim back to level. With its delta wing, the Komet had no tailplane at all, let alone an all-moving tailplane. It had fabric-covered elevons on the trailing edge of the delta wing, which would always be shock stalled. Even if a pilot opened his Komet's rocket engine to full throttle to muscle his way past the sound barrier, Mach tuck would send him tumbling out of control irrecoverably, and probably destroy the airframe. It's also important to be aware of a limitation of early airspeed indicators. One built for subsonic speed is probably going to give unreliable readings in the presence of shockwaves. A phenomenon called compressibility error gives inaccurately high airspeed readings as the aircraft approaches the speed of sound. This error is called Mach jump. To counter this, supersonic aircraft use a Mach indicator instead of an airspeed indicator. The speed of sound at any given pressure and altitude is determined primarily by temperature.

A Mach indicator is essentially an airspeed indicator mounted on an aneroid diaphragm to correct for static air pressure. Since Mach and airspeed are both dependent on temperature, they cancel each other out and no temperature diaphragm is needed. Komets had airspeed indicators, not Mach indicators; and so even the speeds logged by the German test pilots are probably incorrectly high. One of the best known claims to the sound barrier comes from German WWII fighter pilot Hans Guido Mutke, flying perhaps the most devastating fighter of the war, the Messerschmitt Me-262. The 262 was the first true operational jet powered fighter plane in the world, sporting twin BMW 003 turbojet engines mounted below the swept wings. Although the 262 entered the war too late to have any real impact, it boasted a 5:1 kill ratio against allied fighters. Mutke was cruising at 36,000 feet when he began a steep dive under full power. With his airspeed indicator pegged at its limit of 1,100 kph (just over the speed of sound, but remember the airspeed indicator problem), Mutke reported severe buffeting and loss of control.

Suddenly the buffeting stopped and he regained control, with the airspeed indicator still pegged; and it's this that could indicate he had broken the sound barrier. Unfortunately his engines flamed out, not being designed for supersonic speeds, and he slowed, and the severe buffeting returned. Finally his speed dropped enough that he regained control again and was able to restart his engines. He returned to base, and it was found that his aircraft had lost many rivets, and its wings had become so distorted that the plane had to be scrapped. Mutke never understood what had happened until Chuck Yeager's flight was declassified and the supersonic flight profile became known: Severe buffeting while approaching Mach 1, then the shaking stops above Mach 1, and then resumes upon deceleration below Mach 1. But unfortunately for Mutke, there was not, and could not have been, any independent verification of his speed or of the period of smooth supersonic flight. Nobody denies the damage done to his plane during the buffeting period, but supersonic flight was not necessary for this to happen.

The designer of the Me-262, Willy Messerschmitt, always stated emphatically that the 262 was incapable of supersonic flight. In flight tests, he found that at Mach 0.86, the 262 experienced Mach tuck: It lost control and assumed a nose-down attitude that could not be corrected by the pilot, and throttling down was the only way to resume control. The 262 only had conventional elevators on the trailing edge of its tailplane, like all aircraft of the day, so these would have shock stalled and not been able to correct the Mach tuck. But the 262 also had an additional feature: The tailplane was actually all-moving for trim purposes. This was a separate electrically operated control, and it was normally used to keep the plane level as its fuel supply was consumed. Mutke reported that he actually employed this all-moving trim control in order to get out of the nose-down state, a technique which may not have been considered in Messerschmitt's own tests.

Mutke's report was given additional credibility in 1999, when computer modeling and scale model wind tunnel testing conducted at Munich Technical University found that the 262 was capable of reaching, and passing, Mach 1. So, while we cannot prove or disprove Mutke's claim, it is possible that he did reach supersonic flight. However, like in sports, it's not what happened, it's what the referee says happened that matters. Mutke's feat was unverified and unofficial, and certainly unintentional; so even if he did break the sound barrier before Yeager, it "doesn't count." There are two other flights that don't count, both accomplished by George Welch, a civilian test pilot for North American Aviation. On October 1, 1947, just 13 days before Yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1, Welch took the new XP-86 fighter prototype up for its maiden flight. In a powered dive from 35,000 feet, Welch reported Mach jump on his airspeed indicator, showing that he was traveling supersonic. Anecdotal stories say that a sonic boom was heard on the ground.

Welch's airspeed was not being officially recorded, and no official record states that he broke the sound barrier. If he did, it was either unverified or classified. Welch believed that he did, and to hammer the point home, he gave a repeat performance. While Yeager was strapped into the X-1 still attached to its B-50 mother ship, just before the historic flight, Welch again put his XP-86 into a steep dive. Some stories say that he buzzed the B-50 close enough for those onboard, Yeager included, to hear his sonic boom. He made a 4g pullout from his dive, and those same stories say that his sonic boom was louder than Yeager's just 20 minutes later. There is no engineering reason to doubt Welch's claim. The history books credit George Welch with breaking the sound barrier in the XP-86 in a dive six months later on April 26, 1948, with official measurements and a proper Mach indicator on board. Did he do the same thing before Yeager's flight? He may well have, and a lot of people say he did.

But there's a significant difference between Yeager's flight and those of Welch, Mutke, Dittmar, and probably others. Their claims to the sound barrier were all in dives, and were transient at best. Glamorous Glennis, on the other hand, was the first aircraft capable of sustained supersonic level flight. Sure, being the first to break the sound barrier becomes less glitzy when you have to pile on qualifications. But every aviation milestone has been an incremental one; few are truly revolutionary. Yeager, Welch, Mutke, and Dittmar all made real contributions to the science of aviation. All had "the right stuff". At some point, any lines you draw to separate their achievements come down to semantics; yet you still have to draw those lines somewhere. Flights have to be official, they have to be verifiable, and they should demonstrate a deliberate capability. And so, while it's a virtual certainty that the sound barrier was broken by someone somewhere in some circumstance, Chuck Yeager's flight of the Bell X-1 is the only flight to meet all the criteria of a true aviation first. Cite this article: Dunning, B.

"Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier?" Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, 19 May 2009. Web. 19 Jan 2017. < Hilton, William F. High-Speed Aerodynamics. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952. 15-19, and Ch. 6. L.J. Clancey. Aerodynamics. Ney York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated, 1975. 283, 415. Mason, W.H. Configuration Aerodynamics. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, 2006. Chapter 7. Rotundo, Louis C. Into the Unknown: The X-1 Story. Washingon, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994. Wagner, Ray. The North American Sabre. London: Macdonald, 1963. Yeager, Chuck, et. al. The Quest for Mach One: A First Person Account of Breaking the Sound Barrier. New York: Penguin Studio, 1997. Copyright ©2017 Skeptoid Media, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Rights and reuse information Breaking the sound barrier Back to home page click here BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER: FROM MACH 1 TO MACH 10 Contents Further Reading INTRODUCTION Ever since the Wright brothers made the first heavier than air flight on 17 December 1903, man has attempted to fly faster and faster. It was long appreciated that breaking through the sound barrier would present a formidable challenge. The Wright brothers' "Flyer" in Washington's National Air & Space Museum But what exactly is the speed of sound? In fact, it does not have a precise value. The actual speed of sound varies depending on the altitude above sea level because sound travels at slightly different speeds at different temperatures and the temperature varies according to altitude. At sea level, the speed of sound is about 761 miles per hour (1,225 kilometers per hour). At 20,000 feet (6,096 meters), the speed of sound is 660 miles per hour (1,062 kilometers per hour). The speed of sound is commonly refered to as Mach 1, named after the 19th century Austrian physicist Ernst Mach [for biographical details click here ].

Less than Mach 0.8 is said to be subsonic, while Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.2 is said to be transonic. Mach 1.2 to Mach 5.0 is described as supersonic, while speeds greater than Mach 5.0 are characterised as hypersonic. MACH 1 The first flight at faster than the speed of sound occurred on 14 October 1947. The aircraft was the Bell X-1 and the pilot was Captain Charles Yeager. Technically the speed of sound had probably been broken before that by several Second World War aircraft. Some British and American fighters may have unintentionally exceeded the speed of sound in an evasive dive and there are unconfirmed reports that the German Me 262 jet fighter managed to break the sound barrier. In November 1945, a British jet fighter the Gloster Meteor set a new official world speed record of 606.25 mph. It was two years later before the sound barrier was broken by an American aircraft the Bell X-1. Test pilot 'Chuck' Yeager named the aircraft 'Glamorous Glennis' after his wife.

It was painted bright orange because it was thought that this would help the camera and chase aircraft tracking the flight (it was later found that white was a better colour for these purposes). The X-1 was taken up to 20,000 feet slung in the bomb bay of a Boeing B-29 and then released above the Mojave desert in California. The West Virginian pilot of the X-1 'Chuck' Yeager was a Second World War fighter ace who had turned to test flying. Two days before the fateful flight, he had ridden a horse into a gate and cracked two ribs. This made climbing down the ladder from the B-29 into the cockpit of the X-1 - an operation performed at 7,000 feet - extremely painful. Also it necessitated the use of an improvished piece of broomstick in order to enable him to use it as a lever to lock the cockpit door from the inside. It was Yeager's 13th flight in the X-1 and the 50th flight by the aircraft. This time he broke through the sound barrier, the precise speed achieved being Mach 1.015.

In his autobiography, Yeager later commented: "I thought I was seeing things! We were flying supersonic! And it was as smooth as a baby's bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade." The flight was described in the book "The Right Stuff" and depicted in the film of the book [for review click here ]. This was the time of the Cold War and the Americans did not want the Russians to know too much about their military capability, so amazingly news of the breaking of the sound barrier was withheld from the world for over eight months. Although "Aviation Week" leaked the news in December 1947, the Air Force did not confirm it until June 1948. A few months later, the first British aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound was the DH 108 Swallow on 9 September 1948. Today the Bell X-1 that first the National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. The Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis" in Washington's National Air & Space Museum In fact, there were three X-1s and the aircraft eventually reached a speed of Mach 1.46.

Link: Men of the X-1 click here In 1951, test pilot Bill Bridegman flew a Douglas Skyrocket to Mach 1.88. Today, of course, modern fighter jets routinely excceed the speed of sound. In the book "The Cutting Edge", an F-14 pilot is quoted as follows: "A shock wave forms on the aircraft when it reaches supersonic speeds. From the front of the plane, the shock wave appears as a circle, but from the back and sides, it looks like very sharp spikes coming off the plane. It is a rare and spectacular sight, only visible in humid weather. Usually the planes are up too high when supersonic for a visible vapor wave, and since you can't fly supersonic around populations, very few people have caught it stateside. When you go supersonic, you don't feel a thing. It's not the Chuck Yeager story anymore. Planes that are designed to go supersonic go right through 'the number' without a blink. The airplane is as comfortable to fly at landing speeds as it is supersonic.

Things just happen faster." As aircraft approach the speed of sound, an interesting phenemomen occurrs in respect of air movement over the wings. This is known as the Prandtl-Glauert singularity and makes for some impressive photographs. Links: Photos of American military aircraft breaking the sound barrier click here click here click here click here MACH 2 The first flight at more than twice the speed of sound occurred on 20 November 1953. The aircraft was the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket and the pilot was Scott Crossfield. Crossfield was carried to 32,000ft by a United States Navy B-29 Superfortress bomber and he then climbed the rocket-powered aircraft to 72,000ft, before diving to 62,000ft and achieving Mach 2.005 (1,291mph). Only three weeks later, on 12 December 1953, the record was smashed again. The aircraft was the Bell X-1A and the pilot was again 'Chuck' Yeager. In fact, Yeager took the aircraft to Mach 2.44 (1,650 mph).

However, he then experienced a high speed phenomenon known as roll-coupling. The aircraft went completely out of control and tumbled down for 36,000 feet. Yeager was knocked semi-conscious but managed to regain control of the aircraft in time to land it safely. Concorde was the first civilian aircraft to fly at twice the speed of sound in September 1973. MACH 3 The first flight at faster than three times the speed of sound occurred on 27 September 1956. The aircraft was the Bell X-2 and the pilot was Captain Milburn Apt. The Bell X-2 was launched from a specially-modified Boeing B-50 at 31,800 feet. It achieved a speed of Mach 3.196 (2,094 mph). However, the flight then encountered problems known as inertia coupling and Apt jettisoned the cockpit capsule. For some reason, he was unable to use his parachute and was killed - it was his first flight in the X-2. The aircraft itself crashed of course and was scrapped.

MACH 4 The first flight at faster than four times the speed of sound occurred on 7 March 1961. The aircraft was the North American X-15 and the pilot was Captain Robert White. The X-15 was released from the wing of a specially-modified Boeing B-52. The actual speed achieved on this flight was Mach 4.43 (2,905 mph). The North American X-15 in Washington's National Air & Space Museum MACH 5 The first flight at faster than five times the speed of sound occurred on 23 June 1961. The aircraft was again the North American X-15 and the pilot was again Robert White. The actual speed achieved on this flight was Mach 5.27 (3,603 mph). MACH 6 The first flight at faster than six times the speed of sound occurred on 9 November 1961. The aircraft was the North American X-15A-2 and the pilot was once again Robert White. The actual speed achieved was Mach 6.04 (4,093 mph).

A new world speed record was set on 3 October 1967 when an X-15A-2 flown by William J Knight achieved Mach 6.70 (4,520 mph). This record stood for the next 35 years. MACH 7 The first flight at seven times the speed of sound occurred on 27 March 2004. The aircraft was the X-43A which was unpiloted. In fact, although the media at the time widely reported the flight as achieving Mach 7, subsequent assessment revealed that the new speed record was Mach 6.83 (5,060 mph). The 12-foot long X-43A was flown to a height of 100,000 feet over California by a modified Boeing B-52 bomber. It was then dropped and a revolutionary ramjet-scramjet engine came into action for a mere 11 seconds. This was enough to take the experimental craft to its record speed. It then went through a series of manoeuvres for six minutes before it made a planned splash-down in the ocean. It was not recovered because of the cost.

In a normal jet engine, fan blades compress the air. However, in the scramjet, the combustion of hydrogen fuel in a stream of air is compressed by the high speed of the aircraft. Since a scramjet only starts to work at about six times the speed of sound, the X-43A was initially accelerated by a Pegasus rocket. In the course of its 11 seconds of power, the X-41A travelled about 15 miles. The Wright brothers first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. That's progress for you. MACH 10 The first flight at ten times the speed of sound occurred on 16 November 2004. Again the aircraft was the unpiloted X-43A. In fact, although the media at the time widely reported the flight as achieving Mach 10 (around 6,800 mph), it was probably somewhat short of this and the precise speed awaits detailed analysis of the test results. This flight ended the X-43A programme.

The first aircraft had to be destroyed in flight in 2001, the second reached almost Mach 7 in March 2004, and the third achieved the Mach 10 record in November 2004. The $250M (�138M) project has now been shelved. Links: Dryden Flight Research Center click here CONCLUSION The two decades from 1947 to 1967 were times of immense accomplishment as man went from Mach 1 to Mach 6. Now, in the course of 2004, an unmanned craft has taken the record to Mach 10. It is an astonishing achievment. Is this the end of the story? Dr Alan Paull, leader of a scramjet group at the University of Queensland in Australia, hopes to extend his present programme to contemplate scramjet engine tests between Mach 8 and Mach 12. Theoretically, the 'envelope' within which scramjet travel is efficient is between Mach 5 and Mach 15. So, watch this space ... Meanwhile I received this comment on this essay from Mike Waters: "Thank you for a fascinating article on high speed flight!

I do have one quibble though; the Space Shuttle enters the atmosphere at about Mach 18! NASA may call is a 'lumbering truck', but in fact it out performs every aircraft ever made!" FURTHER READING "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979) "Yeager" by General Chuck Yeager & Leo Janos (Bantam Books, 1985) "The X-Planes: X-1 To X-31" by Jay Miller (Aerofax, 1988) ROGER DARLINGTON Chuck Yeager retraces history in the sky, breaking the sound barrier -- again - CNN.com Chuck Yeager retraces history in the sky, breaking the sound barrier -- again By the CNN Wire Staff Updated 11:54 AM ET, Mon October 15, 2012 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

JUST WATCHED Chuck Yeager re-enacts milestone 02:37 Story highlights Chuck Yeager was the first test pilot to break the sound barrier In 1947, he flew past Mach 1 after being dropped from a B-29 bomber at 45,000 feet Yeager said he "laid down a pretty good sonic boom" over Edwards Air Force Base Chuck Yeager retraced history on Sunday, 65 years to the minute, as the first test pilot to break the sound barrier, taking to the skies once again to fly faster than the speed of sound. The 89-year-old Yeager broke the sound barrier in a U.S. Air Force F-15 at 10:24 a.m. over the Mojave Desert, the same location where he first flew past Mach 1 on October 14, 1947, the military said in a statement. Yeager, flying in the F-15 with an Air Force captain, told CNN late Sunday that he hit Mach 1.3 and "laid down a pretty good sonic boom over Edwards" Air Force Base.

Yeager's reenactment of his historic flight came the same day that Austrian Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier as a skydiver, jumping from a balloon at the edge of space to make the 23-mile journey. While Yeager's sound-breaking flight was news in military and aircraft manufacturing circles, his popularity soared when Tom Wolfe detailed Yeager's flight in the book "The Right Stuff" and its subsequent film adaptation. "I really appreciated the Air Force giving me a brand new F-15 to fly," Yeager told CNN. Today, fighter jets can easily break the sound barrier. In fact, Yeager's flight Sunday did it at an altitude of about 33,000 feet, according to a statement provided by the Air Force. But in 1947, the golden age of flight, Yeager was dropped in an experimental rocket-propelled Bell X1 jet from a B-29 bomber at an altitude of 45,000 feet. "That's the only way we could do it," he said. "It took the British, French and the Soviet Union another five years to find out that trick.

It gave us a quantum jump" in aviation advancement, he said. On Sunday, Yeager took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas in the second seat, the one behind the pilot, though he said he was flying the F-15 when it broke the sound barrier over Edwards. "We had to keep it below Mach 1.4. If you want to go Mach 2, you start breaking glasses and cracking roofs," he said. But Yeager hardly sounded disappointed. His final aerial move, he told CNN, was a fly-by, buzzing the tower, at Nellis. How a Human First Broke the Sound Barrier | Motherboard Captain Chuck Yeager sitting in the Bell X-1 cockpit. Image: Wikimedia How a Human First Broke the Sound Barrier Written by October 15, 2014 // 11:30 AM EDT Copy This URL Before October 14, 1947, the general belief was that humans were simply not capable of traveling faster than approximately 343.2 meters per second , or Mach 1. Hence the term, born sometime a decade earlier: "the sound barrier." A bullet or a cannon ball? Sure.

But, it was thought, the transonic drag would cause severe instability to an airplane, and probably rip it and its pilot to shreds. The experimental aircraft piloted on that day by 24-year-old Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager, however, was designed specifically to test this theory. The Bell X-1 —nicknamed Glamorous Glennis, after Yeager's wife—had four rocket engines, thin, upswept wings, and a nose modeled after a .50 caliber bullet . Whereas fighter aircraft of the time were built to withstand 12 times the force of gravity, this was built to absorb 18 Gs. It wasn't, however, designed for control. The Bell X-1 rocket, in a cutaway by NACA, the predecessor to NASA. The airplane now hangs in the Smithsonian. Image: NASA “Basically the X-1 was a pure rocket," Yeager told NOVA in 1997. "It burned liquid oxygen and a mixture of five parts alcohol to one part water. You know, we'd been fooling around with jets.

Jet engines didn't have the thrust to push the airplane into the region of the speed of sound or beyond.” He explained that the X-1 could only hold enough rocket fuel for two and a half minutes of flight. Thus, it had to be taken into the air by a B-29 Superfortress and dropped into flight, at which point the rockets could fire and then burn out, and the plane would glide to safety on the desert floor. But as with most experimental planes, safety was iffy. Col. Albert Boyd, in charge of the US Air Force's test pilots, originally sought a pilot who had no dependents. "I said, 'Yeah, I'm married and I, I've got a little boy, and I, I think that makes me more careful,'" Yeager said. "And that worked out. He said, 'Well, OK, be careful.'" "I gave no thought to the outcome of whether the airplane would blow up or something would happen to me," Yeager said. "It wasn't my job to think about that.

It was my job to do the flying." Yeager's flight as depicted in "The Right Stuff" (1983) Two nights before the flight, however, Yeager fell from a horse and broke two of his ribs. He was so worried about being removed from the mission that he forewent a doctor and instead visited a veterinarian in a nearby town for treatment. He kept the accident from his superiors and only told his wife and his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley. On the morning of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he was unable to close the X-1's hatch by himself. So Ridley left a broken-off broom handle in the cockpit , which allowed Yeager to seal the hatch. "Hey Ridley!" Yeager said into the radio. "Make another note. There's something wrong with this Machmeter. It's gone completely screwy!" Yeager and his plane were dropped from the Superfortress at 20,000 feet. At first, he stalled, but gained enough speed to get lift, and then switched on his rockets in sequence, accelerating to 0.88 Mach. The plane started shaking; the controls locked up momentarily.

Yeager used the horizontal stabilizer, deactivated two of his rockets, and regained control. He fired the two rockets again, and, at over 42,000 feet, catapulted himself to a speed of 700 miles per hour, or 1,127 kpm. The needle on his Machmeter pushed past "1" and off the scale. For about 20 seconds, Yeager enjoyed smooth supersonic flight at what was recorded as Mach 1.06. "There was no buffet, no jolt, no shock," he wrote later . "Above all, no brick wall to smash into. I was alive." He wanted to tell someone, anyone, that he'd just pierced the sound barrier. But to maintain secrecy, transmissions were restricted. "Hey Ridley!" he recalled saying into the radio. "Make another note. There's something wrong with this Machmeter. It's gone completely screwy!" Ridley understood. "If it is, we'll fix it," he replied.

"'But personally, I think you're seeing things." To observers on the ground, the loud "ba-boom" sound that the X-1 made—a sonic boom—was the sound of the plane catching up with the sound waves it was emitting. Imagine these sound waves "piling up" in front of the aircraft as it accelerated; once it outran them, the resulting change in pressure was heard by those listening on the ground as an explosion , echoing across the California desert. (The intense build-up of pressures at this speed also creates clouds of water vapor around the wings.) A newsreel from 1948 The news of Yeager's flight was kept secret until June, 1948. But once word got out, the race was on to find a new breed of men ready to travel by rocket, a mission dramatized by Tom Wolfe in his 1979 book The Right Stuff . Yeager (portrayed by Sam Shepard in the 1983 film version of the book, and who had a cameo role as a bartender named Fred) would not join the group of test pilots who would become NASA's first astronauts, but he would break all sorts of other aviation records.

Meanwhile, speculation mounted that the barrier had already been busted by a manned flight earlier—by Air Force pilot George Welch during a high-speed dive , or by a test pilot in Nazi Germany . But Yeager's sonic boom was thought by the few people within earshot to be the first with a human attached to it. Many speed demons would follow "the world's first supersonic man." The racing pilot Jackie Cochran was the first woman to break the sound barrier on May 18, 1953, in a Canadair Sabre, with Yeager as her wingman. As supersonic flight became more widely understood, the notion of "the sound barrier" continued to fade. Swept wings, aerodynamic design, and engines of ever-increasing performance would mean that many combat aircraft of the 1950s could routinely break the sound barrier in level flight, though not without some difficulty. Supersonic flight is now relatively straight-forward for modern fighter jets, but attempts to bring Mach 1 to commercial flight have not been as successful. The Concorde, introduced in the 1970s, would be retired in 2003.

It's also thought that a China Airlines 747 may have broken the sound barrier in an unplanned descent from 41,000 ft to 9,500 ft after an "in-flight upset" in 1985. Land vehicles can also surpass Mach 1. On October 15, 1997—50 years and one day after Yeager's first supersonic flight—a rocket car called the ThrustSSC , for "Super Sonic Car," was the first, officially. And in 2012, 65 years to the day after Yeager's record-setting flight, Felix Baumgartner would be the first human to break the sound barrier with his own body in his famous 840 mph Redbull-sponsored freefall . (Though Joe Kittinger may have beaten him to that title decades earlier .) An FA-18 Hornet as it breaks the sound barrier. The vapor cloud is the result of low-pressure regions generated by the aircraft's wings just prior to Mach 1.

Image: Kevin Dickert / CC That same day, in Nevada, an 89-year-old Yeager, now an Air Force General, climbed into the backseat of an F-15 Eagle—nicknamed Glamorous Glennis III—and passed Mach 1 at more than 30,000 feet over California's Mojave Desert. Yeager reportedly flew the plane during take-off and landing. It was his last official Air Force flight. Afterwards, when reporters asked what he made of Baumgartner's feat, he said he hadn't heard about it. A young girl asked him if he was scared. Yeager joked, "Yeah, I was scared to death." Breaking the Sound Barrier | The Greatest Moments in Flight Breaking the Sound Barrier | The Greatest Moments in Flight By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | July 23, 2012 04:43pm ET MORE Chuck Yeager and the X-1 research plane that broke the sound barrier. It can be seen today at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office This is part of a SPACE.com series of articles on the Greatest Moments in Flight, the breakthrough events that paved the way for human spaceflight and its next steps: asteroid mining and bases on the moon and Mars. A booming thunder roared across the clear skies of the Mojave Desert on Oct. 14, 1947, as U.S. Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager nudged an experimental rocket-powered plane faster than the speed of sound. Though only a handful of people realized it at the time, an aviation record had been set. In 1935, a simplified explanation of the challenges of supersonic flight led to the creation of the term "sound barrier," which seemed to imply a physical wall that could not be overcome. Bullets and cannon balls had exceeded the speed of sound for hundreds of years, but the question loomed as to whether or not a plane—or a man—could withstand the pressures that accompanied it. The U.S. Air Force set out to answer this looming question. Sponsored message: The plane The Bell X-1 broke the sound barrier with Col. Chuck Yeager at the controls on Oct. 14, 1947.

Credit: NASA A bullet-shaped plane, the Bell X-1 (originally designated the XS-1), was modeled after a .50 caliber machine gun bullet, an object known to be stable as it exceeded the speed of sound. Four rocket engines propelled the X-1, and it was built to absorb 18 times the force of gravity. Unlike most planes, it didn't take off from the ground, but was instead dropped from the belly of a B-29 Superfortress, rapidly accelerating in the air on only a few minutes worth of fuel before gliding back to the dry lakes below. The historic plane, nicknamed the "Glamorous Glennis" for Yeager's wife, slowly approached the sound barrier over the course of nine flights. Muroc Air Force Base—now known as Edwards Air Force Base—in the empty southern California desert provided an ideal spot for testing a variety of experimental vehicles, including the X-1. The pilot The man who would go down as the most famous test pilot in American history was born in West Virginia on Feb. 13, 1923. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager enlisted as a private in the U.S.

Army Air Corps at the age of 18 and served in World War II, where he flew 64 combat missions. In 1945, he was assigned as a maintenance officer to the Flight Test Division at Wright Field, Ohio, flight-testing the planes. Col. Albert Boyd, in charge of the test program for the Air Force, invited him to become a test pilot, and Yeager accepted, transferring to Muroc to enroll in the Flight Performance School. It was there that Yeager was selected to be the first person to attempt to exceed the speed of sound. The flight Yeager's first test launch of the Glamorous Glennis took place on Aug. 29, 1947, with subsequent attempts increasing speed by two hundredths of a Mach number. Mach is a unit of measuring the speed of sound in a given medium; a plane traveling at .2 Mach moves at only two-tenths the speed of sound, while Mach 1 is equal to it.

(The speed of sound is about 758 miles (1,220 kilometers) per hour at sea level, and decreases with altitude.) Reaching .86 Mach on the sixth flight, the X-1 began to experience turbulence from the shock wave formed by the compression of the air. On the seventh flight, at Mach .94, Yeager lost the ability to control the plane's elevator, a problem since the shock waves caused the nose to pitch up and down. He cut the engines, dumped the fuel, and landed safely in the desert. Another pilot suggested using the horizontal stabilizer to correct the problem, and on-the-ground tests seemed to suggest the alternate method of control would work. Two days before his historic flight, Yeager was thrown from a horse while riding with his wife and broke two ribs. Knowing that he would never be allowed to fly, he traveled to a doctor off base and had them taped up. Unable to close and latch the side door by hand, he utilized a broom handle at the suggestion of a fellow pilot. On Oct. 14, 1947, Yeager and the X-1 were dropped from the B-29, and quickly accelerated away.

When the controls locked up, he successfully used the horizontal stabilizer to keep the plane stable. As the plane accelerated to Mach 1.06, controllers on the ground heard the first sonic boom . (The end of a bullwhip moves faster than the speed of sound. Some say the "crack" is a small sonic boom.) After exceeding the speed of sound, the buffeting decreased, creating a smooth short flight. The plane remained supersonic for approximately 20 seconds before Yeager turned off two of the four engines and slowly decelerated. The follow-up Chuck Yeager continued to act as a flight consultant for the air force until his last flight on October 14, 1997. Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office Yeager continued to fly experimental aircraft for the Air Force, and was appointed director of the Space School, NASA's precursor, where he trained astronauts to prepare for launch. He flew more than 120 combat missions in Vietnam. After 34 years in the military, he retired in 1975 at the rank of brigadier general, though he continued to serve as a consultant.

His last flight as a military consultant occurred 50 years to the day after he broke the sound barrier. In 1979, Tom Wolfe's best-selling nonfiction book, The Right Stuff, and the subsequent 1983 movie popularized Yeager's exploits to a generation too young to remember them. Yeager and his wife, Glennis, had four children before her death in 1990. He remarried in 2003. —Nola Taylor Redd TR 1/2003: A. Chelain: Was the Me262 the First Airplane to Break the Sound Barrier? Was the Me262 the First Airplane to Break the Sound Barrier? By André Chelain Was the German jet interceptor Messerschmidt 262 the first airplane in the world to break the sound barrier? The answer to this question is shaking up the aeronautical world, because it could easily knock several shining heroes of the US Air Force from their pedestals. As far as official historians are concerned, Charles Yeager was the first pilot to achieve the great feat of supersonic flight, on board a Bell X-1 in 1947.

In the future, the historians may have to revise their teachings, however. Luftwaffe veterans are claiming that they broke the sound barrier in 1944. The Americans are uncommonly proud of their pilots, whom they praise to high heaven whenever they set new records or do anything exceptional. In American military legends, breaking the sound barrier was as great a feat as the first space flights. Historical revision is going to be painful for them, especially as it pertains to those Air Force pilots who were involved in the binge of record-breaking in the late 40s and early 50s, before the age of space exploration. Idolized and made into national heroes, they are spectacularly touted by Tom Wolfe in his dazzling film The Right Stuff. And indeed, theirs was no small accomplishment. In October of 1947 Chuck Yeager, at an altitude of 8750 meters, ignited the rockets of his Bell X-1, which had been carried to an altitude of 8750 meters beneath a B-29.

He described the sensation as a feeling that his lungs were "as flat as pancakes." Within minutes the young flier had become the darling blue eyed boy of American journalism; and thanks to the immense power of the American media his story was broadcast around the globe. Arguably the most aesthetic of all airplanes ever built Give the Germans the Credit They Deserve Sooner or later, historians will have to acknowledge German discoveries and inventions made during the Third Reich, which American pretense and cover-ups have denied for half a century. It was German public health officials who initiated campaigns against tobacco smoking and cancer, German scientists and engineers who made the pioneering breakthroughs in modern air and space travel. In 1945 the results of their work were expropriated and taken to the USA where they were impressed into the service of the American military machine. A similar fate befell French experts who were involved in the development of nuclear weapons. They were kept against their will in the USA and they were not allowed to take their personal records with them when they returned to France after World War II. The Vanquished Speak Out Nowadays in Germany, however, voices are being heard which cast doubt on the official version according to which Chuck Yeager was the first to break the sound barrier.

Anglo American historians will be forced to take cognizance of their arguments. After more than half a century of silence in which they endured war, defeat and captivity, German pilots and engineers are determined to set the record straight and regain for the Luftwaffe the credit and recognition it deserves. In the final months of the War, completion of the Luftwaffeï¿½s program to develop jet interceptors, particular the Me 262, brought its designers and pilots some unpleasant surprises. Nobody had realized the real potential of this superb airplane, which was indeed the tiger shark of the air. The pilots were the first to realize that it had achieved the speed of sound. The Germans are now claiming that the sound barrier was broken by an Me 262 during aerial combat against allied aircraft, when it went into a power dive. Former Luftwaffe pilot Hans Guido Mutke, now 80 years old, is certain that he surpassed Mach 1, which is the speed of sound. He was a member of a new Me 262 squadron which the Luftwaffe hastily put together in hopes of creating a turning point in the air and thereby changing the course of the war.

Shaken by a Giant On 9th April, Mutke was flying at an altitude of 12,000 meters when he received a distress call from a comrade who was being attacked by a British Spitfire. In response, he immediately put his jet fighter into a power dive. Here is his description of what happened then: "The airspeed indicator was stuck in the red danger zone, which is over 1100 km/hr. I noticed that rivets began popping out of the tops of the wings. The airplane began vibrating and shaking wildly, banging my head against the sides of the cockpit. After diving about three miles I again regained control and was able to return to base. On the runway the mechanics were very surprised by the appearance of the airplane, which looked as though it had been shaken by the hand of a giant." Reports prepared by American test pilots in 1946, which have been preserved in military archives in Dayton, Ohio, describe in detail the performance of the German jet fighter and support the claims of the German pilots. The Me 262 did indeed have the capacity to achieve Mach 1.

Additional arguments to confirm this have been submitted by Professor of Aeronautics Karl Doetsch, now 90 years old. In 1944 he was assigned the task of discovering why several Me 262s had mysteriously crashed or disintegrated in the air. In the course of several experiments Prof. Doetsch soon established that difficulties set in at around Mach .85 He concluded that pilots who unknowingly broke through the sound barrier were likely to lose control of their aircraft and crash. The Speed of Sound After more than half a century it is difficult to confirm or deny the claims of the German pilots, especially since the speed of sound varies with altitude, air pressure and temperature. At sea level, Mach 1 corresponds to a speed of 1193 km/hr, but this decreases with increasing altitude. At 12 000 meters it is 1063 km/hr. Therefore it is difficult to determine whether an airplane has exceeded the speed of sound without bulky measuring devices. Chuck Yeagerï¿½s record will probably stand for a long time to come, because it was scientifically measured, documented and authenticated.

Hans Mutkeï¿½s record, on the other hand, was made in the heat of combat. He has nothing to support it except terrifying memories of losing control of his airplane. An air speed of 1100 km/hr at an altitude of 8000 meters surpasses the speed of sound. If Mutke began his power dive at an altitude of 12,000 meters and leveled off at 8750 meters, his Messerschmidt met these conditions. An airspeed of 1100 km/hr at an altitude of 8,000 m clearly surpasses the speed of sound. How the Past Was Obscured by Terror In the climate of intellectual terror which has reigned in Germany for the last 30 years it has been impossible to acknowledge German achievements made between 1933 and 1945. The irrational nature of this totalitarian attitude is evident from a large number of examples. The swastika, symbol of National Socialism, may not be publicly displayed. This is an essentially religious measure which has no historical parallel. Pioneering measures of the National Socialist leadership in introducing policies to protect the environment are likewise denied.

Göringï¿½s legislation to forbid the vivisection and butchering of live animals; legislation prescribing humane hunting practices; measures against the abuse of tobacco, prophylactic measures against cancer; and laws for the peaceful use of nuclear energy are all historical facts which have been repressed. The official historians continue to weep under the rug everything which would contribute to a multifaceted or differentiated view of Hitlerï¿½s government. The Me 262, a one man airplane, exhibited the ultimate design and performance of its day. It was powered by two Junker "Jumo" jet turbines, each having 900 kilogramms of thrust, giving it a speed of 870 km/hr. Armament consisted of four 30mm cannon with 360 rounds of ammunition. This article originally appeared in the magazine Lï¿½Autre Histoire, III(18), Juli 2001, S. 36f. (la Licorne bleue, 3 bis rue Jules Vallès, F-75011 Paris); translated into English by James M. Damon.

Source: The Revisionist 1(1) (2003), pp. 69-71. Sky diver breaks sound barrier with 24-mile leap Sky diver breaks sound barrier with 24-mile leap Felix Baumgartner becomes the first sky diver to break the sound barrier. Post to Facebook Sky diver breaks sound barrier with 24-mile leap Felix Baumgartner becomes the first sky diver to break the sound barrier. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. 169 To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs Sky diver breaks sound barrier with 24-mile leap Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY Published 5:00 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2012 | Updated 9:30 p.m. ET Oct.

14, 2012 CLOSE x Share In a giant leap from more than 24 miles up, a daredevil skydiver shattered the sound barrier Sunday while making the highest jump ever, a tumbling, death-defying plunge from a balloon to a safe landing in the New Mexico desert. (Oct. 14) Felix Baumgartner waves to the crowd after successfully jumping from a space capsule lifted by a helium balloon at a height of just over 128,000 feet above the Earth's surface Sunday in Roswell, N.M. (Photo: Ross Franklin, AP) Jump broke 52-year record Minor problems failed to cancel jump Moments before stepping off a small metal platform near Roswell, N.M., on Sunday and plunging to Earth from 24 miles in space, Austrian sky diver Felix Baumgartner offered a few static-filled words for posterity. "Sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are," said Baumgartner, 43. Then he jumped, a diminishing white dot against an impossibly black sky.

With his leap from 128,000 feet, Baumgartner becomes a larger-than-life figure in aerospace history, joining the ranks of those who have pushed personal and technological limits as they tempted fate and tested science. He reached 833.9 mph, or mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit. He fell at supersonic speeds on the same date in 1947 that test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in an aircraft. Adding to his inevitable fame is the fact that the feat was streamed live on computers and smartphones around the world using more than 30 high-definition cameras arrayed on the ground as well as in and outside of his capsule. A two-hour BBC documentary will hit TV soon, and there surely will be the inevitable chats with talk show hosts and calls from admirers. But so far none of that seems to be getting to Baumgartner's buzz-cut head.

Baumgartner's jump was possible partly due to an expensive operation packed with top scientists, but also to the pioneering work of adventurers past, says Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum focusing on popular culture and spaceflight. "In many ways, Felix was standing on the shoulders of giants," she said. "Baumgartner himself will be advancing the science of how the human body responds to the upper atmosphere, just as many test pilots did before him." The event seemed to be an irresistible blend of space derring-do and extreme sports insanity, particularly at the moment when Baumgartner could be seen standing on the edge of space in frightening HD clarity. "I was actually scared at that point," said Clara Moskowitz, assistant editor at Space.com. "I know he captured the attention of a lot of people, because I had friends who have no interest in space emailing and texting me. This was a human being literally stepping into the unknown. It doesn't get more intense than that." The Austrian skydiver's leap Sunday beat the record set by retired Air Force colonel Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 plunged out of an open basket from 102,800 feet.

Kittinger served as a mentor to Baumgartner throughout the five-year project. The mission, dubbed Red Bull Stratos after the Austrian energy drink company that sponsored the jump, also set records for highest manned balloon flight (113,740 feet in 1961) and fastest free fall (Kittinger at 614 mph). Red Bull Stratos marks yet another aerospace advance by a private company, filling the void left by the massive state-sponsored space initiatives that once were the hallmark of American and Russian scientific programs. Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic remain dedicated to putting civilians in space, and Stratos' mission was to test how humans and space suits would react to emergency exits at high altitude. Baumgartner's jump was not without drama. He complained about a lack of heat in his helmet on the way up, which caused mission engineers to debate whether or not to bring him down in the capsule. Then, on the descent, the skydiver could be seen by an infrared camera as a tiny white dot against a black backdrop spinning wildly, precisely the situation the team was hoping to avoid as it could lead to a loss of consciousness or worse.

But Baumgartner got that spin under control, and minutes later landed gracefully on his feet in the dusty New Mexican desert. The sky diver immediately fell to knees. Cameras trained on his family – who had never been to the United States before – showed his parents, brother and his girlfriend cheering. Baumgartner has been working his way up to this world record jump from the edge of space for the past few years, twice running into speed bumps. Austrian promoter Daniel Hogan derailed the first mission when he sued Red Bull Stratos claiming he'd thought of the idea first. That suit was settled out of court last summer. Last Slide Next Slide The other hiccup was more serious. Unaccustomed to freefalling while confined by a helmet and cumbersome suit, Baumgartner started suffering panic attacks and pulled himself off the project. He overcame his fears with the help of a sports psychologist. "It was simple stuff," Baumgartner told USA TODAY in August after making his final test jump -- from nearly 100,000 feet. "I'd put on a helmet and tell him, from one to 10, how panicked I felt.

And in the end, no matter what the number was, he told me my pulse rate never changed. So it was all in my head." For a quick primer on how Baumgartner worked his way up to this historic jump, head to YouTube. He broke through the extreme sports world clutter in 1999, when he jumped off the world's tallest building (Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers, 1,483 feet) and dove off Rio de Janeiro's 130-foot Christ the Redeemer statue (the video shows him scurrying directly into a waiting getaway car before police can arrest him). Red Bull, known for sponsoring extreme athletes, promptly signed up Baumgartner, who finally realized he could make a living off doing dangerous things. Curiously, he doesn't come from a risk-taking family; his brother is a chef, and the rest of his family "doesn't even ski," he says. In 2007, he and Red Bull decided to make an assault on Kittinger's 52-year-old record. Kittinger, who had made his pre-Mercury program jump with rudimentary equipment, had long resisted efforts to recruit him to help others break his record.

But ego wasn't the issue, it was a lack of capital and seriousness that always caused him to say no. "This whole deal is very expensive," Kittinger told USA TODAY. "If what I rode into space was a Model T, this is a Ferrari." But while the Ferrari easily delivered the victory Sunday, don't look for its driver to do anything like this again. "This is the end of my journey," he said. "I've always been trying to find my limit, and this pretty much it. For the second half of my life, I want to be a good helicopter pilot. Fight fires. Rescue people. That would be fun." 5348 CONNECT TWEET 20 LINKEDIN 169 COMMENTEMAILMORE Read or Share this story: NEVER MISS OUT The Short List Let us bring the headlines to you every night. Stay current and catch up on the biggest stories of the day.

Question: What was the name of the first pilot to break the sound barrier?
Answer: Chuck Yeager