Chuck Yeager, a retired Air Force Brigadier General who became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, has broken the sound barrier again, 65 years later.
Yeager, now 89, became the first test pilot and human to break the sound barrier in 1947. His historic flight in an experimental rocket plane took place 30,000 feet over the Mojave Desert in California.
On Sunday, Yeager, who was featured in the film "The Right Stuff," took to the skies again, as a passenger this time, and recreated the sound barrier breaking flight. The F-15 Eagle jet took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. It broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m., which was the exact minute that he completed the feat 65 years earlier, according to the New York Daily News.
Capt. David Vincent flew the plane that carried the 89-year-old Yeager as they broke the sound barrier together at Mach 1.4.
When Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947, he was in an experimental rocket-propelled Bell X1 jet which was dropped from a B-29 bomber at 45,000 feet, according to CNN.
"That's the only way we could do it," he told CNN.
"It took the British, French and the Soviet Union another five years to find out that trick. It gave us a quantum jump" in aviation advancement, he said.
While Yeager was breaking the sound barrier in a jet, daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier with his body as he jumped from a balloon that took him 128,100 feet in the air. The jump from the edge of space was the highest distance that anyone has ever jumped. The previous record, set by Joe Kittinger, was 102,800 feet.
Baumgartner reached speeds up to 833.9 mph as his body fell freely from the sky. He broke the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.24. He is the first man to reach supersonic speed without an aircraft. At about 6,000 feet, he successfully pulled his parachute open and floated back to the New Mexico desert in Roswell.
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