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Chuck Yeager
First Man to Break the Sound Barrier
Chuck Yeager: Well, number one, they built the airplane with very thin wings so that the airplane could go faster before it ran into the buffeting problems. It was rocket-powered, which meant that you had full thrust at altitude -- jet engines decrease in thrust the higher you go -- and it was built about two-and-one-half times stronger than airplanes that we were flying at that time. The airplanes that we used in World War II, and the ones that were built immediately after World War II, were stressed for 7.33 Gs, or 7.33 times the pull of gravity and, if you overstressed them, they would break, obviously. The wings would break off and the like. But the X-1 was stressed for 18 Gs, positive or negative. So it would stay together in case you run into a problem. And also, it had a moveable, horizontal stabilizer. The tail-plane on all airplanes just stabilizes, and you have elevators on the back to make the airplane go up and down. Well, they built the capability into the X-1 to move the whole angle of the horizontal stabilizer, change the angle with that. That really was the big secret on how we got the airplane through the speed of sound. That horizontal stabilizer.
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Robert Zemeckis
Motion Picture Production
Robert Zemeckis: I was in my parents' living room, and I was watching The Johnny Carson Show as I did every night, you know? And Johnny had Jerry Lewis on as a guest. And he started his interview by saying, "So I understand you're teaching college." And Jerry Lewis said, "Yeah, I'm a visiting professor at the USC School of Cinema." And I said, "School of Cinema?" Never in my wildest -- I mean, school was about engineering and science, but cinema? I mean, literally, the thought never crossed my mind that something like this could have existed. And then, the next day I went to the library and looked up the USC School of Performing Arts and saw their curriculum. And it was just amazing how it opened my eyes.
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