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Mach 1, The Sound Barrier

In the high desert of Mojave there is nothing but dust, fossils, petrified cactus branches, sand storms that cross the air to 42 degrees. In winter, the rains are some pools that appear faint in the curved worms, shrimp-like. Gulls come from the ocean to devour. The Mojave looks like a landscape of ancient geological era. Also is the best runway in the world. In March, any remaining moisture evaporates and vastness that takes a firm surface and polished.

Sixty years ago, two small sheds, a gas station and the canteen of a tanned woman wearing the paradoxical name of Pancho Barnes, formed Muroc Air Base. The pilots had a salary of $ 283 per month and living in bungalows with wire mesh doors battered by freezing winds that night.

The base offered refuge to the test drivers. The aircraft was then a rustic pioneer company and the new invention, a junk lot simple. The X-1 was very small and thin wings, the ship followed the contours of a .50, but looked more like a sausage compact, and the door was identical to the openings to the dogs in the webs of wire. The X-1 was designed to achieve the speed known as Mach 1 (in honor of Ernst Mach sonic research), ie, to break the sound barrier . Some physicists thought that the barrier was a real physical limit and that nothing would come out unscathed from the impact sound. In 1946, Geoffrey de Havilland, son of the famous aeronautical engineer, tried to make the DH 108 was designed by his father arrived Mach 1. The plane and pilot were disintegrated in the attempt. `` The sound barrier was that you could buy a ranch in the sky,''Tom Wolfe wrote in an exceptional non-fiction novel The Right Stuff .

designated driver to crew the X-1 was Slick Goodlin, a cold-blooded man who asked for $ 150 000 out shot the lapis sky. Muroc base was barely money for fuel and eyes turned to a man without imagination to the danger, who spoke broken English and archaic of the Appalachian Mountains and at 18 had changed the overalls by driller uniform pilot: Chuck Yeager.

Sixty years after his suicide flight, Yeager is still unable to see them as little bias as epic. `` Somebody had to do the job,''said before the television interviewers perplexed hope the retired general, who at 74 years continues to fly for pleasure, unravel the mystery of heroism.

Yeager is a kind of magnificent air plumber. Find holes, clean the area, draws an evacuation route. Their responses are those of a craftsman able to see that is about all turns to shit.

At 22, Chuck Yeager participated in the second World War, was wounded in combat and shot down 13 aircraft. At age 24, was ready to fly towards its own annihilation. The only problem is that there was no way to stop it. In its first flights with the X-1 reached Mach 0.9 and 0 0 85 without permission from the base. The final flight was ahead for Tuesday October 14, 1947.

Sunday Yeager got drunk as usual in the canteen of Pancho Barnes and climbed on a horse to graze armadillos in the light of the moon. Fell somewhere in the desert and broke two ribs.

on Tuesday was in the cabin of the X-1, smearing shampoo on board controls to prevent freezing in height, with two broken ribs and a parachute which only served as a mattress. It was hard to reach the door and took a broom to help. Under these conditions up to the sky and produced the sound of which was the first out. `` When the speed reached Mach 1.05-Tom Wolfe writes, "Yeager had the sensation of exceeding the ceiling of the sky. The air took on a deep purple hue and all the stars and the moon came out suddenly, and the sun shone at the same time. Had reached a layer of the upper atmosphere where the air is too thin to contain reflective particles. I was just watching the space. The X-1 approached the top of His ascension and we had seven minutes ... Paradise Flyer. Was faster than any other man in history, everything was almost silent up there, he had exhausted his supply of fuel and was so high in a space so vast that there was little notion of movement. He was master of the sky. It was the loneliness of a king, unique and inviolable, the dome of the world. It would take seven minutes to redirect the path and go down to Muroc.''

Fifty years later, Chuck Yeager, described the scene as if it had never taken off and Tom Wolfe as though it never landed. In the third rock from the sun, the sky is still a mysterious barrier.