{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}
{{otheruses1|the aviation term}}
In
aerodynamicsAerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...
, the
sound barrier usually refers to the point at which an
aircraftAn aircraft is a vehicle which is able to fly by being supported by the air, or in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil An aircraft is a vehicle which is able to fly by being supported...
moves from
transonicTransonic is an aeronautics term referring to the condition in which a range of velocities of airflow exist surrounding and flowing past an air vehicle or an airfoil. Air flow velocities are concurrently below, at, and above the speed of sound at the pressure and temperature of the airflow of the...
to
supersonicThe term supersonic is used to define a speed that is over the speed of sound . In dry air at 20 °C , the threshold value required for an object to be traveling at a supersonic speed is approximately 343 m/s, . Speeds greater than 5 times the speed of sound are often referred to as hypersonic...
speed. The term came into use during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of
compressibilityIn thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, compressibility is a measure of the relative volume change of a fluid or solid as a response to a pressure change.where V is volume and p is pressure...
, a collection of several unrelated aerodynamic effects. By the 1950s, aircraft started to routinely "break" the sound barrier.
History
Some common whips such as the
bullwhipA bullwhip is a single-tailed whip, usually made of braided leather, which was originally used as a stockman's tool for working with livestock.Bullwhips are agricultural tools, traditionally used to control livestock in open country...
or sparewhip are able to move faster than sound: the tip of the whip breaks the sound barrier and causes a sharp crack—literally a
sonic boomThe term sonic boom is commonly used to refer to the shocks caused by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion...
.
FirearmA firearm is a device which projects either single or multiple projectiles at high velocity through a controlled explosion. The firing is achieved by the gases produced through rapid, confined burning of a propellant. This process of rapid burning is technically known as deflagration...
s since the 19th century have generally had a supersonic
muzzle velocityA gun's muzzle velocity is the speed at which the projectile leaves the muzzle of the gun. Muzzle velocities range from subsonic for some pistols to more than 1,800 m/s for tank guns firing kinetic energy penetrator ammunition. The latter velocity is close to the limit achievable with chemical...
. However, the sound barrier may have been first breached some 150 million years prior to the inventions of these implements. Some
paleobiologistPaleobiology is a growing and comparatively new discipline which combines the methods and findings of the natural science biology with the methods and findings of the earth science paleontology...
s report that, based on computer models of their
biomechanicalBiomechanics is the application of mechanical principles to living organisms. This includes bioengineering, the research and analysis of the mechanics of living organisms and the application of engineering principles to and from biological systems...
capabilities, certain long-tailed
dinosaur{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Otheruses}}{{pp-semi-protected|small=yes}}{{Taxobox|name = Dinosaurs|fossil_range = {{Fossil range|230|65|earliest=230|latest=0|PS=
Descendant taxon Aves survives to present.}}|image = field_dinos_2.jpg...
s such as
apatosaurusApatosaurus , including the popular but obsolete synonym Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived about 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period . It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of 23 m and a mass of at least 23 metric tons...
and
diplodocusDiplodocus is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek "double" and "beam", in reference to its double-beamed chevron bones located in...
may have possessed the ability to flick their
tailThe tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals and birds...
s at supersonic velocities, possibly used to generate an intimidating booming sound. This finding is theoretical and disputed by others in the field.
Early problems
The tip of the
propellerA propeller is a type of fan which transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and air or water is accelerated behind the blade...
on many early aircraft may reach supersonic speeds, producing a noticeable buzz that differentiates such aircraft. This is particularly noticeable on the
StearmanStearman Aircraft Corporation was an aircraft manufacturer in Wichita, Kansas. Although the company designed a range of other aircraft, it is most known for producing the Model 75, which is commonly known simply as the "Stearman" or "Boeing Stearman"....
, and noticeable on the
T-6 TexanThe North American T-6 Texan was a single-engine advanced trainer aircraft used to train fighter pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, United States Navy, Royal Air Force and other air forces of the British Commonwealth during World War II. Designed by North American Aviation, The T-6 is...
when it enters a sharp-breaking turn. This is undesirable, as the transonic air movement creates disruptive shock waves and turbulence. It is due to these effects that propellers are known to suffer from dramatically decreased performance as they approach the
speed of soundSound is a vibration that travels through an elastic medium as a wave. The speed of sound describes how far this wave travels in a given amount of time. In dry air at , the speed of sound is . This equates to , or about one mile in five seconds...
. It is easy to demonstrate that the power needed to improve performance is so great that the weight of the required engine grows faster than the power output of the propeller. This problem was one of the issues that led to early research into
jet engineA jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet of fluid to generate thrust in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets and pump-jets...
s, notably by
Frank WhittleAir Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS was a British Royal Air Force officer. Sharing credit with Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain for independently inventing the jet engine, he is hailed as a father of jet propulsion.From an early age Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for...
in England and
Hans von OhainHans Joachim Pabst von Ohain was one of the inventors of jet propulsion.The engineers, Frank Whittle in the United Kingdom and Hans von Ohain in Germany, developed the concept independently during the late 1930s, although credit for the first turbojet is given to Whittle,Ohain designed the first...
in Germany, who were led to their research specifically in order to avoid these problems in high-speed flight.
Propeller aircraft were, nevertheless, able to approach the speed of sound in a dive. This led to numerous crashes for a variety of reasons. These included the rapidly increasing forces on the various control surfaces, which led to the aircraft becoming difficult to control to the point where many suffered from powered flight into terrain when the pilot was unable to overcome the force on the control stick. The Mitsubishi Zero was infamous for this{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} problem, and several attempts to fix it only made the problem worse. In the case of the
Supermarine SpitfireThe Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries through the Second World War. The Spitfire continued to be used into the 1950s both as a front line fighter and in secondary roles...
, the wings suffered from low torsional stiffness, and when ailerons were moved the wing tended to flex such that they counteracted the control input, leading to a condition known as
control reversalControl reversal is an adverse effect on the controllability of aircraft. To the pilot it appears that the flight controls have reversed themselves; in order to roll to the left, for instance, they have to push the control stick to the right, opposite of the normal direction.There are several...
. This was solved in later models with changes to the wing. The
P-38 LightningThe Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a World War II American fighter aircraft built by Lockheed. Developed to a United States Army Air Corps requirement, the P-38 had distinctive twin booms and a single, central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament...
suffered from a particularly dangerous interaction of the airflow between the wings and tail surfaces in the dive that made it difficult to "pull out", a problem that was later solved with the addition of a "dive flap" that upset the airflow under these circumstances. Flutter due to the formation of
shock waveA shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...
s on curved surfaces was another major problem, which led most famously to the breakup of
de Havilland SwallowThe de Havilland DH 108 "Swallow" was a British experimental aircraft designed by John Carver Meadows Frost in October 1945. The DH 108 featured a tailless, swept wing with a single vertical stabilizer, closely resembling the layout of the wartime German Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket-powered...
and death of its pilot, Geoffrey de Havilland, Jr.
All of these effects, although unrelated in most ways, led to the concept of a "barrier" that makes it difficult for an aircraft to break the speed of sound.
Early claims
There are, however, several claims that the sound barrier was broken during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Hans Guido MutkeDr. Hans Guido Mutke was a fighter pilot for the German Luftwaffe during World War II. He was born in in Neisse, Upper Silesia ....
claimed to have broken the sound barrier on April 9, 1945 in a
Messerschmitt Me 262The Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe was the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft. It was produced in World War II and saw action starting in 1944 as a multi-role fighter/bomber/reconnaissance/interceptor warplane for the Luftwaffe.The Me 262 claimed a total of 509 Allied kills ...
. Mütke reported not just transonic buffeting but the resumption of normal control once a certain speed was exceeded, then a resumption of severe buffeting once the Me 262 slowed again. He also reported engine flame out. However, this claim is widely disputed by various experts believing the Me 262's structure could not support high transonic, let alone supersonic flight. The lack of area ruled fuselage and 10 percent thick wings did not prevent other aircraft from exceeding Mach 1 in dives.
Chuck YeagerCharles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired General in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He is widely considered to be the first pilot to travel faster than sound...
's
Bell X-1The Bell X-1, originally designated XS-1, was a joint NACA-U.S. Army Air Forces/US Air Force supersonic research project and the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound in controlled, level flight...
, the
F-86 SabreThe North American Aviation F-86 Sabre was a transonic jet fighter aircraft. The Sabre is best known for its Korean War role where it was pitted against the Soviet MiG-15 and obtained UN air superiority...
(with Me-262 profile ) and the
Convair Sea DartThe Convair F2Y Sea Dart was a unique American seaplane fighter aircraft that rode on twin hydro-skis for takeoff. It only flew as a prototype, and never entered production, but it is still the only seaplane to exceed the speed of sound.-Development:...
seaplaneA seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories: floatplanes and flying boats...
exceeded Mach 1 without area rule fuselages. Computational tests carried out by Professor Otto Wagner of the
München Technical UniversityThe Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan....
in 1999 suggest the Me 262 was capable of supersonic flight during steep dives. Recovering from the dive and the resumption of severe buffeting once subsonic flight was resumed would have been very likely to damage the craft terminally.
On page 13 of the "Me 262 A-1 Pilot's Handbook" issued by
Headquarters Air Materiel CommandAir Force Materiel Command is a major command of the United States Air Force. AFMC was created July 1, 1992 through the reorganization of Air Force Logistics Command and Air Force Systems Command....
,
Wright FieldWright-Patterson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in Greene and Montgomery counties, eight miles northeast of the central business district of Dayton, Ohio, United States. Part of the base is located along the city limits of Riverside and is also adjacent to Fairborn and...
, Dayton, Ohio as Report No. F-SU-1111-ND on January 10, 1946:
- "Speeds of 950 km/h (590 mph) are reported to have been attained in a shallow dive 20° to 30° from the horizontal. No vertical dives were made. At speeds of 950 to 1,000 km/h (590 to 620 mph) the air flow around the aircraft reaches the speed of sound, and it is reported that the control surfaces no longer affect the direction of flight. The results vary with different airplanes: some wing over and dive while others dive gradually. It is also reported that once the speed of sound is exceeded, this condition disappears and normal control is restored."
The comments about restoration of flight control and cessation of buffeting above Mach 1 are very significant in a 1946 document.
In his book
Me-163, former Me-163 pilot Mano Ziegler claims that his friend, test pilot Heini Dittmar, broke the sound barrier when steep-diving the rocket plane and that several on the ground heard the sonic bangs. Heini Dittmar had been accurately and officially recorded at 1,004.5 km/h (623.8 mph) in level flight on October 2, 1941 in the prototype Me-163a V4. He reached this speed at less than full throttle as he was concerned by the transonic buffeting. The craft's Walter RII-203 cold rocket engine produced 7.34 kN (750 kgp / 1,650 lbf) thrust. The flight was made after a drop launch from a carrier plane to conserve fuel, a record that was kept secret until the war's end. The craft's potential performance in a powered dive is unknown but the Me 163B test version of the series rocket plane had an even more powerful engine (HWK 109-509 A-2) and a greater wing sweep as the Me 163 A. Ziegler claims that on July 6, 1944, Heini Dittmar flying a test Comet Me-163BV18 VA + SP was measured traveling at a speed of 1,130 km/h. Similar claims for the Spitfire and other propeller aircraft are more suspect. It is now known that traditional airspeed gauges using a
pitot tubeA pitot tube is a pressure measurement instrument used to measure fluid flow velocity. The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot in the early 1700s and was modified to its modern form in the mid 1800s by French scientist Henry Darcy...
give inaccurately high readings in the transonic, apparently due to shock waves interacting with the tube or the static source. This led to problems then known as "Mach jump".
Attempts to break the sound barrier
The first self-propelled vehicle to break the sound barrier was probably the first successful test launch of the German V-2
ballistic missileA ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
on October 3, 1942, at
PeenemündePeenemünde is a village in the northeast of the German part of Usedom island. It stands near the mouth of the Peene river, on the easternmost part of the German Baltic coast. The area includes the 1992 :commons:Historisch-technisches Informationszentrum Peenemünde, an Anchor Point of the...
in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. By September 1944, the V-2s routinely achieved Mach 4 (4,900 km/h) during terminal descent.
In 1942 the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
's
Ministry of AviationMinistry of Aviation was a department of the United Kingdom government, established in 1959. Its responsibilities included the regulation of civil aviation and the supply of military aircraft, which it took on from the Ministry of Supply....
began a top secret project with
Miles AircraftMiles was the name used to market the aircraft of British engineer Frederick George Miles, who designed numerous light civil and military aircraft and a range of curious prototypes...
to develop the world's first aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier. The project resulted in the development of the prototype
Miles M.52The Miles M.52 was a British supersonic research aircraft project which was undertaken in top secret between 1942 and 1945. The Air Ministry later cancelled the project for reasons that remain controversial to this day.-Design and development:...
jet aircraft, which was designed to reach 1,000 mph (417 m/s; 1,600 km/h) at 36,000 feet (11 km) in 1 minute 30 sec.
The aircraft's design introduced many innovations which are still used on today's supersonic aircraft. The single most important development was the all-moving
tailplaneA tailplane, also known as horizontal stabilizer, is a small lifting surface located behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplanes...
, giving extra control to counteract the
Mach tuckMach tuck is an aerodynamic effect, whereby the nose of an aircraft tends to pitch downwards as the airflow around the wing reaches supersonic speeds. The aircraft will be subsonic, and traveling significantly below Mach 1.0, when it experiences this effect....
which allowed control to be maintained to and beyond supersonic speeds. This was wind-tunnel tested at Mach 0.86 in 1944 in the UK. In the immediate postwar era new data from captured German records suggested that major savings in
dragIn fluid dynamics, drag refers to forces that oppose the relative motion of an object through a fluid . Drag forces act in a direction opposite to the oncoming flow velocity...
could be had through a variety of means such as
swept wingA swept wing is a wing planform with a wing root to wingtip direction angled beyond the spanwise axis, generally used to delay the drag rise caused by fluid compressibility. Swept wings provide lateral stability and it was for this reason that the concept was first employed in the designs of...
s, and Director of Scientific Research, Sir
Ben LockspeiserSir Ben Lockspeiser was the first President of CERN.Quote about the establishment of CERN. "Scientific research lives and flourishes in an atmosphere of freedom - freedom to doubt, freedom to enquire and freedom to discover...
, decided to cancel the project in light of this new information. Later experimentation with the Miles M.52 design proved that the aircraft would indeed have broken the sound barrier, with an unpiloted 3/10 scale replica of the M.52 achieving Mach 1.5 in October 1948. By that time, the sound barrier had been broken by the Americans, and also by the British De Havilland DH 108.
Sound barrier officially broken
U.S. efforts progressed apace soon after Britain had disclosed all its research and designs to the U.S. government, on the promise that U.S. information would be shared the other way. The U.S. betrayed by not disclosing any information in return, stating the Pentagon had deemed the project Top Secret.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} They took the technological information provided by the British and began work on the Bell XS-1. The final version of the Bell XS-1 has many design similarities to the original Miles version. Also featuring the all-moving tail, the XS-1 was later known as the X-1. It was in the X-1 that
Chuck YeagerCharles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired General in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He is widely considered to be the first pilot to travel faster than sound...
was credited with being the first man to break the sound barrier in level flight on 14 October 1947, flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km). George Welch made a plausible but officially unverified claim to have broken the sound barrier on 1 October 1947, while flying an XP-86 Sabre. He also claimed to have repeated his supersonic flight on October 14, 1947, 30 minutes before Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. Although evidence from witnesses and instruments strongly imply that Welch achieved supersonic speed, the flights were not properly monitored and are not officially recognized. The XP-86 officially achieved supersonic speed on 26 April 1948.
On October 14, 1947, just under a month after the United States Air Force had been created as a separate service, the tests culminated in the first manned supersonic flight, piloted by Air Force Captain
Charles "Chuck" YeagerCharles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired General in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He is widely considered to be the first pilot to travel faster than sound...
in aircraft #46-062, which he had christened "Glamorous Glennis", after his wife. The rocket-powered aircraft was launched from the bomb bay of a specially modified B-29 and glided to a landing on a runway. XS-1 flight number 50 is the first one where the X-1 recorded supersonic flight, at Mach 1.06 (361 m/s, 1,299 km/h, 807.2 mph) peak speed; however, Yeager and many other personnel believe Flight #49 (also with Yeager piloting), which reached a top recorded speed of Mach 0.997 (339 m/s, 1,221 km/h), may have, in fact, exceeded Mach 1.{{Citation needed|date=October 2008}} (The measurements were not accurate to three significant figures and no sonic boom was recorded for that flight.)
As a result of the X-1's initial supersonic flight, the National Aeronautics Association voted its 1948 Collier Trophy to be shared by the three main participants in the program. Honored at the White House by President Harry S. Truman were Larry Bell for Bell Aircraft, Captain Yeager for piloting the flights, and John Stack for the NACA contributions.
Jackie CochranJacqueline Cochran was a pioneer American aviator, considered to be one of the most gifted racing pilots of her generation...
was the first woman to break the sound barrier on May 18, 1953, in a Canadair Sabre, with Yeager as her wingman.
The sound barrier fades
As the science of high-speed flight became more widely understood, a number of changes led to the eventual disappearance of the "sound barrier". Among these were the introduction of
swept wingA swept wing is a wing planform with a wing root to wingtip direction angled beyond the spanwise axis, generally used to delay the drag rise caused by fluid compressibility. Swept wings provide lateral stability and it was for this reason that the concept was first employed in the designs of...
s, the
area ruleThe Whitcomb area rule, also called the transonic area rule, is a design technique used to reduce an aircraft's drag at transonic and supersonic speeds, particularly between Mach 0.8 and 1.2...
, and engines of ever increasing performance. By the 1950s many combat aircraft could routinely break the sound barrier in level flight, although they often suffered from control problems when doing so, such as
Mach tuckMach tuck is an aerodynamic effect, whereby the nose of an aircraft tends to pitch downwards as the airflow around the wing reaches supersonic speeds. The aircraft will be subsonic, and traveling significantly below Mach 1.0, when it experiences this effect....
. Modern aircraft can transition through the "barrier" without it even being noticeable.
By the late 1950s the issue was so well understood that many companies started investing in the development of supersonic airliners, or
SSTA supersonic transport is a civil supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. The only SST to see regular service were Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144. The last passenger flight of the Tu-144 was in June 1978, and Concorde's last flight was on...
s, believing that to be the next "natural" step in airliner evolution. History has proven this not to be the case, at least yet, but
ConcordeThe Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde aircraft was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...
and the
Tupolev Tu-144The Tupolev Tu-144 was the world's first supersonic transport aircraft , constructed under the direction of the Soviet Tupolev design bureau headed by Alexei Tupolev....
both entered service in the 1970s regardless.
Although Concorde and the Tu-144 were the first aircraft to carry commercial passengers at supersonic speeds, they were not the first or only commercial airliners to break the sound barrier. On August 21, 1961, a
Douglas DC-8The Douglas DC-8 is a four-engined jet airliner, manufactured from 1958 to 1972. Launched later than the competing Boeing 707, the DC-8 nevertheless established Douglas in a strong position in the airliner market, and remained in production until 1972 when much larger designs, including the DC-10,...
broke the sound barrier at Mach 1.012 or 1,240 km/h (776.2 mph) while in a controlled dive through 41,088 feet (12,510 m). The purpose of the flight was to collect data on a new leading-edge design for the wing. A
China Airlines 747China Airlines Flight 006 was a daily non-stop flight departing from Taipei at 4:15 pm and arriving in Los Angeles International Airport at 7:00 am local time. On February 19, 1985, it was involved in an accident that caused two serious injuries and substantial damage to the aircraft...
almost certainly broke the sound barrier in an unplanned descent from 41,000 ft (12,500 m) to 9,500 ft (2,900 m) after an in-flight upset on February 19, 1985. It also reached over 5g.
Breaking the sound barrier on land
The sound barrier was first broken in a vehicle in a sustained way on land in 1948 by a rocket-powered test vehicle at Muroc Air Force Base (now Edwards AFB) in California, United States. It was powered by 6,000 lbs (27 kN) of thrust, reaching 1,019 mph (1,640 km/h).
On 15 October 1997, in a vehicle designed and built by a team led by
Richard NobleRichard Noble, OBE was a holder of the land speed record between 1983 and 1997, and was the project director of ThrustSSC, the vehicle which holds the land speed record, set at Black Rock Desert, Nevada in 1997....
, British driver (and
Royal Air ForceThe Royal Air Force is the United Kingdom's air force, the oldest independent air force in the world. Formed on 1 April 1918, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history ever since, playing a large part in World War II and in more recent conflicts.The RAF operates almost 1,109...
pilot)
Andy GreenWing Commander Andy D. Green OBE BA RAF is a British Royal Air Force pilot and World Land Speed Record holder.-RAF career:...
became the first person to break the sound barrier in a land vehicle. The vehicle, called the
ThrustSSCThrust SSC is a British-designed and built jet-propelled car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers and Jeremy Bliss....
("Super Sonic Car"), captured the record exactly 50 years and one day after Yeager's flight.
External links
{{commons}}
- Fluid Mechanics, a collection of tutorials by Dr. Mark S. Cramer, Ph.D
- Breaking the Sound Barrier with an Aircraft by Carl Rod Nave, Ph.D
- a video of a Concorde
The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde aircraft was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...
reaching Mach 1 at intersection TESGO taken from below
- An interactive Java applet, illustrating the sound barrier.
{{extreme motion}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sound Barrier}}