Page 11 - March 2021 Voices

Breaking the Imagination Barrier

PJ Kleffner, DTM - District Director

penetrate it would cause the plane to disintegrate. lack of education in physics, because he didn’t
Air superiority already proved itself to be know enough to be afraid when they asked for
a factor in winning wars, so the US invested volunteers. You might say there were no “facts”

to interfere with his imagination.
The speed of sound is designated Mach 1,
named after Ernest Mach, the Austrian
physicist who measured it in the

1800s. Depending on atmospheric
conditions like temperature
and humidity, Mach 1 is
approximately 767 MPH. Bell

pilots had taken the X-1 to 0.8
Mach before Chuck Yeager took
over, and the goal was to reach Mach
1.1. Progress was slow, because there

was so much fear of what would
heavily in pushing the performance envelope. happen at Mach 1. The goal for each
One goal was to fly faster than the speed of sound flight was to increase the speed by a mere .02
– break the sound barrier. Bell was awarded the Mach.

contract to design and build the X-1 experimental The X-1 was more like a rocket than a plane,
aircraft. and was not designed for normal take-offs. They
Chuck Yeager was selected as the head hauled it up to 25,000 feet in a B-29, and dropped
test pilot for a number of reasons. Most of it out the bomb bay doors. The first few times,

the other military test pilots were college- they didn’t load the X-1 with fuel, and just let
educated engineers, but Chuck was a farm Chuck glide back to earth getting a feel for how
boy who barely made it through high school. the aircraft handled.
However, his experience as a topnotch fighter All went well until the first powered flight.

pilot during WWII, and years of tinkering with The B-29 pilot was supposed to go into a dive
farm equipment, helped him do things with to pick up speed so the X-1 wouldn’t stall before
those airplanes that the others never dreamed Chuck could get the rockets fired. The dive was
possible. Another important factor was his too shallow, so they didn’t pick up enough speed

VOICES! | MARCH 2021 11