This other type of engine does not require air from outside to generate the thrust it needs, since it has it stored in its tanks. The answer to the problems was the rocket engine. If a conventional jet engine receives a flow of air that, when compressed by the blades, increases its speed above that of sound, it stops working well or directly stops working. A jet engine works by ingesting the air from outside, compressing it and increasing its volume through combustion, to finally expel it at higher pressure. The engines that had been tested until then were jet engines, which, as we have said before, experienced serious problems at high speeds in generating enough thrust to break that barrier due to their way of acting. With the X-1 plane it was shown that it was possible to go faster than sound How did you manage to overcome the sound barrier? Who was going to say that this aircraft, the X-1, would set precedents and manage to add more than 50 ‘X aircraft’ to the list, such as the X-15, which in the 1960s reached the limit of space for the first time Exterior. The first experimental aircraft whose sole purpose was to investigate in the field of aeronautics and break the sound barrier. In 1947, the X-1 was built in the United States. A feat starring United States Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager. But against all odds, on October 14, 1947, it was finally achieved. Today we know that this anomaly occurred because even though the plane was moving at sub-sonic speeds, the blades of the engine in these conditions if they rotated above the speed of sound which altered its ability to compress air to the combustion chamber.įor all this, it was thought that the proposed goal was unattainable. That “shock wave” that when it is crossed causes the well-known “sonic stampede”.Īnother problem was the sudden loss of power experienced by jet engines as they approached the sound barrier. compressibility ”that gives rise to what is known as a shock wave. You ask yourself, why? Among the main obstacles was the fact that in the tests as the aircraft approached Mach 1 (unit of measurement of sound speed) the aerodynamic drag increased exponentially due to what is known as “drag resistance”. Each new attempt was crowned with a resounding failure, if not serious accidents. Approximately 344 m / s at 20 ° C temperature, or what is the same, 1,238.4 km / h.ĭespite the technological advances that were being implemented in each new generation of aircraft, it was not possible to overcome the mythical barrier. That is, the possibility of exceeding the speed at which sonic waves are transmitted through the air. But pilots and engineers ran into the so-called ‘sound barrier’ over and over again. Each time the aircraft were able to fly higher and faster. During World War II, the world of aviation underwent an impressive technological revolution.

Sound barrier speed