Chuck Yeager died yesterday at the age of 97. He was the first person to fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound. The BBC’s article about Chuck Yeager’s passing included some archival footage of his flight in the Bell X-1 that he flew. Watching that footage reminded me of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s VR Hangar app which included virtual tours of the X-1 and other famous aircraft and spacecraft. 

Unfortunately, the VR Hangar app is no longer available. But you can see the Bell X-1 in the Google Arts and Culture app as well as on the Google Arts and Culture website.

TED-Ed offers a lesson about breaking the sound barrier. The lesson is called The Sonic Boom Problem and it explains how a sonic boom is created and how math is used to predict the path of a sonic boom in the atmosphere. 

Here’s some archival footage of Yeager’s flight in the Bell X-1.