Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, in level flight while piloting the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m)[ over the Rogers Dry Lake of the Mojave Desert in California.
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He spent his last years not all that far from Cal Maritime; I wish Iâd had a chance to meet him while I was there and he was alive.
Another Pilot of the era that was blessed with a pair of large ones.
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Funny thing about Yeager. He never applied to be an astronaut though he trained most of them when they were test pilots. He technically didnât qualify because he only had a high school education but reports are he wasnât interested as there was no piloting involved in the early flights. Terms like âspam in a canâ came from some test pilots. Yeager said the US putting a man in a capsule to one up the Soviets was simply a substitute for a monkey which they had launched into space. He also likely wouldnât have been chosen due to many derogatory remarks heâd made such as when asked about the program and he replied âAstronautsâ are merely guinea pigs and youâd have to wipe the monkey shit off the seats". Didnât really put him in a good light to be considered. He was the last of an era.
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Between 1984 and 1988 I was a frequent visitor at Wilmington N.C. Seamenâs Mission where an elderly Lady Mrs Simpson ( RIP) was helping me pick up some old /used paper back books wriiten by US authors and some old copies of National Geographic. I collected them by kilograms . One of the books i picked up with front cover missing was â The Right Stuff â. I read it very quickly as it turned out to be a page turner . And it was about the the early days of US space program. The itemes ( sayings , jokes ) expressed by first teams of future astronauts were exactly like the ones mentioned by @tengineer1 and there were many , many more not only conversations & jokes but also hilarious situations. Some years later i bought dvd with the movie titled The Right Stuff and I still have it viewing it from time to time. The book is on my lib.shelve too.
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In a fun contrast, this book came out fairly recently giving the other side of the story, as it were.
High scholarship it ainât, but amusing it is. It mostly relies on secondary sources and doesnât reveal anything truly new, but itâs a fun ride for anyone not already deeply familiar with the stories. The amazing thing isnât how many people the Soviet Space Program killed - itâs how many it miraculously didnât.
If Chuck Yeager commented that US astronauts were just spam in a can, the cosmonauts had it even worse - their early capsules had so little pilotability that this author describes them as more space ordnance than spacecraft, and early cosmonauts were chosen in large part by their experience in parachuting. Because their early capsules couldnât land.
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they still make men like these but like a needed general, theyâre kept in the dark till needed. âreal menâ âŚâŚâŚâŚ not for daily distribution!
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