On October 14, 1947, U.S. Air Force General Charles “Chuck” Yeager became the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Flying in the Bell X-1 rocket engine-powered aircraft (nicknamed Glamorous Glennis after Yeager’s wife), Yeager dropped the plane from the bomb bay of a B-29 — and achieved supersonic flight over Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. In “the most historic ride since the Wright Brothers,” Yeager reached Mach 1.06 (700 mph) at an altitude of 45,000 feet. Fun fact: the “Mach” number, or the ratio of one’s speed to that of sound, and was named after physicist Ernst Mach, who photographed an object moving faster than the speed of sound in 1887.
The Cosmosphere is proud to display this replica of “The Orange Beast” from the Oscar-winning film “The Right Stuff” in our new X-Plane Gallery. And check-out the XLR-11 rocket engine which propelled the Bell X-1 into history, and an XMC-2 spacesuit worn by test pilot (and shuttle Astronaut) Joe Engle on the X-15…which he flew above 266,000 feet. (Photo: Cosmosphere)