60 years ago today, Chuck Yeager became the first human to break the Mach 1 “sound barrier”.
When I was a kid, I remember watching old TV shows and movies about how it was impossible to go faster than sound, how’d you’d go back in time or some such nonsense. I thought it was fun then (and silly), but it wasn’t until later that I heard that a lot of people really thought it was impossible to go faster than sound. But it wasn’t a physical barrier (like the speed of light), it was an engineering one. Bullets, whips, and meteors all go faster than sound, so we knew it could be done.
And so we did it.
So I tip my propeller beanie to not just General Yeager, but also to the team of engineers who made it possible.
A tip o’ the beanie to Fark, too. Oh, as usual: childish, NSFW comments in that link. Duh. It’s Fark.
