Realizing the Current Aspects of Today’s Fast-Paced Society in Relation to the Foundational Beginnings of Flight

With today’s continually evolving world, sometimes it is nice to take a step back and review the tributaries that formed the rushing river of contemporary society. One such factor that flew the world into hyper speed has been the constantly new modes of transportation invented over the years. One particularly fascinating and important form is flight. Since its conception, airplanes have made international relations stronger and booming industries. As all good things, it started out small and simple. I8n this case, it all began in Dayton, Ohio in 1896.

The two most famous brother credited with fathering flight are Wilbur and Orville Wright. These boys grew up with a bishop for a father and a mother that died in their high school years. After her death, they began their own printing business, which late turned into a bicycle shop. While tinkering with the bikes, the brothers began to formulate ways to balance an aircraft like riders do on their bikes. They took biplanes and warped the wings, and made test flights on kites. They continued further and tried to put controls in the planes.

These new balanced planes and initial controls were tested in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers chose this location because it was near the ocean, where they could take advantage of the strong sea winds. They loved using this wind to test out the wing designs and perfected it here. By the time they mastered the design, they began working on a small, light weight engine to outfit the plane. Racing against Samuel P. Langley, another flight enthusiast, Wilbur and Orville made their fist successful flight on December 17. 1903. With two more year of tweaking and fine tuning, the first “practical” plane was created in 1905.

Fast forwarding a few more years, 1926 was the next milestone with the invention of the Goddard rockets. These were the first liquid propellant rockets. It was manufactured by Robert H. Goddard, and it blasted up to forty-one feet in about two and a half seconds. Even more impressive is that it went one-hundred-four feet across the sky. The next memorable step was the legendary “Spirit of St. Louis” transatlantic trip performed by Charles Lindburgh in 1927. The next one took place fifteen years later with the invention of the first American turbojet.

On October 14, 1947 the “Glamorous Glennis” soared into the record books. An airplane piloted by Captain Charles Yeagar, it was the first manned aircraft to travel even faster than the speed of sound. It hit a record nine-hundred-fifty-seven miles per hour and reached altitudes of over seventy-thousand feet. At the time, it was most known for reaching the highest altitude for a manned spacecraft. The craft was named after Captain Charles wife. Strangely enough, all the above is small talk, especially as we travel to the late fifties.

On October 4, 1957, almost ten years later, the Russians launched Sputnik. Sputnik was the first artificial satellite sent into orbit around the Earth. It was an intense battle between the United States and Russia for this claim to fame, but the Russians beat us. This even sparked the infamous “Space Race”, that sent the United States scrambling to reach further heights. The U.S.’s response was the Explorer 1 Jupiter Rocket in 1958. This was quite the eye opener, and it revealed the radiation from the now called “Van Allen Radiation Belts”. It was the first big discovery for the Space Race.

Breaking into the sixties, on December 14, 1962 the United States launched the Mariner 1. The Mariner was the first aircraft created to study another planet. This little sucker came within an impressive twenty-one-thousand feet of Venus. Comparative to the Explorer, it discovered further radiation, magnetic fields, and interplanetary dust. The communication with the Mariner was lost on January 2, 1963. It now orbits the sun, at least we think it still does.

Since we were able to get satellites up in space, it was time to send a human. On February 20, 1962 we sent up John H. Glenn Jr. This man went around Earth three times, for a total of almost five hours before crash landing into the Atlantic Ocean. Our escapade followed the Russians, much to our dismay, from their success in 1961. The Gemini IV was another very impressive landmark of flight. The first spacewalk was performed by Edward H. White on June 3, 1965. The technical word for spacewalking is “Extra Vehicular Activity” (EVA). His amazing feat lasted for twenty minutes, and was ten minutes longer than the Russian’s first walk of only ten minutes.

Our next point, was the North American X-15. This was the first winged aircraft to actually work at extremely high altitudes of one-hundred-thousand feet. It was created as a rocket powered, research craft to study the problems of flight. The funny part about it was that unbeknownst to it’s creators, it would ultimately link manned flight to space exploration. The North American X-15 ended up functioning more like a space craft than an actual plane. Hooray for Americans, we actually made it somewhere before the Russians!

One of the most famous milestones is Apollo 11. This was the infamous first steps on the moon by Neil Armstrong. It was made into three parts, consisting of a command module, a service module, and a lunar module. The lunar module was nicknamed “The Eagle”. One of the astronauts stayed in the command module to take further pictures of the moon’s surface while the other two began their descent to Earth in the Eagle. Who can forget the quote “Small step for man, a giant leap for mankind”? From this exploration, we obtained basalt moon rocks from Apollo 17 that were used to study the moon’s surface.

Jumping from the moon to Mars, we travel to July 20, 1976. The Viking Lander, was the first spacecraft to reach Mars. It survived a ten month trip to get to Mars. The Viking Lander was a huge success because it continued to send us photographs until November of 1982. In 1983, the Pioneer 10 had reached beyond the known recesses of our solar system. It flew past Jupiter and even entered Pluto’s orbit. It entered an asteroid belt on July 15, 1983 and came out of it seven months later, unharmed! Their greatest achievement was that it reached beyond all known planets.

The Pershing II was a nuclear arms carrier, which continued the Cold War. The International Nuclear Forces Treaty prohibited the use of the Pershing II and other nuclear arms deployed in space. This was a sad note in history, because of the Space Race, the United States and Russia kept going back in forth and eventually tried to resort to arms in order to end it. Thankfully, this phase ended. A fun aspect of the milestones of flight occurred on March 19, 1999. The Breitling Orbiter was the first non-stop flight around the world by air balloon. It was performed by a British citizen.

The most recent milestone occurred on June 21, 2004 in the form of “SpaceShipOne”. This was the first privately owned space ship to reach space. This is a rather interesting point because it has been developed in order to attract possible tourism to space. Such as you pay a large fee, and they take you up into space and then back. It is not unlike your usual amusement parks today. The flight reached into space just enough, without being sent into orbit, and then landed safely back on Earth. It lasted twenty-four hours. It has won several awards for being privately created and its overall success. It is designed to hold three people, be light weight, and special wings for safe return to the Earth’s atmosphere.

The journey to today’s flight technology was a long, but rather interesting one. Just to think that everything starts with a simple idea, but image how much work has gone into developing it. Several nameless people have put their lives into the field, yet only a few get the real credit. Perhaps we can someday go into space for a day and then come home. Neat day trip huh?