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>>Flashing across California desert skies, the airplanes you see

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here are writing new chapters in the story
of man made flight....there she goes!

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>>This is my first opportunity
to greet you as deputy administrator

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of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration.

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>>Together, you and I must make our new agency

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>>A most unusual place

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>>An organization that can challenge
conventional wisdom.

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>>We can engineer anything we can write the requirements for.

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>>We're going to make your idea work.

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This particular idea is quite disruptive.

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>>A typical flight, of course, starts
under the wing of the B-52 mothership.

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>>This sleek, high speed machine
would have made Rube Goldberg proud.

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>>The manner in which we fly
reentry from space,

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on the space shuttle was
pioneered on the X-15.

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>>The X-31 pretty much wrote the book on thurst vectoring, along with its sister program, the F-18 HARV.

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>>An observation of an occulation is

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one of the more challenging
missions that SOFIA can do.

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>Right now, we are looking
at the dawn of a new era of aviation.

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[Music/Background sound]

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[Music/Jet revving]

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[Jet flying over]

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>>Your Air Force is continually developing
new and more astonishing aircraft.

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>>We have the air.

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We have the power.

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>>The development of new power in the air
has brought about terrific speed,

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>>...diving of subsonic airplanes at speeds

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for which they were never designed
could be a hazardous business.

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>>Knowledgeable men were seriously wondering
whether man could ever fly faster

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than the speed of sound.

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>>It remained for the High-Speed
Flight program to attack these problems

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with scientific facilities of a new kind.

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>>Rifle and artillery shells had been
traveling supersonically for many years.

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The XS-1 was indeed
shaped like a .50 caliber bullet.

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>>...through the sound barrier-

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the first time ever in level flight!

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>>Blazing through sound barriers
and now heat barriers,

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the Bell X-2 reaches the unheard-of
speed of nineteen hundred miles per hour.

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>>The D-558 was the first American aircraft

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to use swept back wings and stall fences.

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The primary mission of the X-3
was thin wing research.

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...the X-4 was its lack of a horizontal tail.

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The X-5 could sweep its wings
in flight.

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>>Pilots achieved a 7-to-1 record over the MiGs...

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The United States Air Force played

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a vital role in holding the line
against Communist aggression.

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>>Step by step, these different aircraft
helped nibble away at the unknown

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until the frontiers of manned flight
had been advanced

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from speeds of 500 miles
an hour to Mach 3.

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>>It was long before Sputnik
that we decided to build the X-15.

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This was a logical step
in the research aircraft program...

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the first hypersonic aircraft...

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>>What is to be man's role in space travel?

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Can he pilot an aircraft
out of the earth's atmosphere, fly it in space,

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then reenter the atmosphere
and bring it back to a safe

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landing on earth?

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>>Designed to investigate the problems of manned flight

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in a near space environment.

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There were many unknowns to be discovered.

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Many problems to be overcome.

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Hypersonic flow of air
would heat the leading edges of the plane

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to 1300 degrees Fahrenheit.

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How could the pilot
control the aircraft in air

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so thin that normal
aerodynamic control would be impossible?

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No engine like this
had ever existed before.

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>>The fifty thousand pounds of thrust
in a single chamber

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had to be controllable
at the pilot's discretion.

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>>The X-15 pilots flew to study
the physiological

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aspects of high speed and high
altitude flight.

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The data gathered proved to be invaluable
to follow on missions

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beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

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>>They have dramatized the potential
of piloted high performance aircraft

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in a space environment
at a time when much of the world's

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gaze was turned toward orbital flight.

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>>The airplane has become an important means
of commercial transportation

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and a decisive weapon of war

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...air transportation helps our economy...

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>>The United States is only about 5 hours wide.

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>>Research programs investigate flight at ever greater speeds as time and distance shrink.

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>>A supersonic transport must be durable
and it cannot itself cost too much.

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>>The controversial XB-70 gathers

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invaluable data on stability
and control characteristics.

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>>We were flying two YF-12s with a whole lot
of supersonic, high temperature types of research...

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...and the F-111 TACT airplane,

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which contributed greatly to the knowledge
of the transonic regime...

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>>...a cross-country flight that would take you minutes instead of hours...

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>>The X-43 is a revolutionary
new kind of airplane.

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What we want to do with this is prove
that hypersonic flight with an air

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breathing engine is possible.

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>>...through Mach 3...

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[Music]

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>>Though the technology exists

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for aircraft to fly at speeds faster
than the speed of sound,

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today's aircraft don't.

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[Sonic booms]

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>>If an aircraft is flying
from New York to Los Angeles,

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the sonic boom will be heard
consistently across the country.

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>>We're talking about commercial operations.

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...you having, you know, 40 in a day

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>>We'd be breaking windows
or at least annoying a lot of people.

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[Music/Background noise]

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>>We can, in fact, shape the airplane

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in such a way that we can
shape the sonic boom,

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and it sound different...

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>>This project is looking to put instrumentation

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for the air crew to see
where the airplane is booming the ground at.

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It's a real time
map display overlaid with the boom

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showing where it's
hitting the ground.

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>>Supersonic...

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>>It's that pull out that puts the quiet
boom out on the area of interest.

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>>...foxtrot heard thump thump...spike 3 thump thump...

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>>The end goal is to create a quiet supersonic aircraft.

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>>With the X-59 program,

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we're going to be gathering a series
of data from communities around the US

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relating people's response
to the noise, to the sonic thumps.

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We're hoping that the data
that we gather with X-59 will convince

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the regulatory agencies to change the
no supersonic overland flight rule.

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[Music]