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A Museum Tour Through Aviation History
Milestones of Flight (Gallery 100)As we enter the Museum from its main (North) entrance, we find ourselves in the "Milestone of Flight" gallery, where the singularly most important aircraft and spacecraft in history are displayed. Even if you don't have time to see anything else in the Museum, spend at least 30 minutes here looking at these marvelous machines and reading the informative placards.
Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 (1896) [Museum photo from the National Air & Space Museum]Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley was one of the first major aeronautical figures in the United States. In 1887, he began experimenting with rubber band-powered models of flying machines and, by 1892, was experimenting with larger models powered by steam engines. On May 6, 1896, Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful flight of any engine-driven heavier-than-air craft. It was launched from a catapult mounted on top a houseboat on two flights that day, one of 3,300 feet and the other of 2,300 feet. Despite the success of Langley's powered models, his attempts to construct and fly a manned, powered aircraft were less successful.
Wright "Kitty Hawk" Flyer (1903) On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright realized the long-held dream of controlled, manned, powered flight. The Wright "Kitty Hawk" Flyer was piloted by Orville on a controlled flight of 120 feet and 12 seconds. Alternating between them, Orville and Wilbur made a total of four flights that day, with the longest of 852 feet and 59 seconds. Prior to this monumental achievement, the Wright Brothers had, like Langley before them, experimented with unmanned craft (full sized gliders) before their manned, powered flights.
Goddard's First Rocket (1926) On March 16, 1926, only 23 years after the Wright Brothers' first powered flight, Dr. Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket from a field near his aunt's home in Auburn, Massachusetts. Goddard's First Rocket generated 9 pounds of thrust, rose to an altitude of 41 feet, and landed 184 feet away after a flight of 2.5 seconds. This was a very small, but very important, first step that would eventually lead to the construction of some of the most powerful space vehicles every conceived by mankind. Goddard had speculated about the possibility of spaceflight as early as 1899, when he was 17 years old, and by 1919 his theories were published by the Smithsonian Institution in a paper called "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitude." In the museum photo above, a replica of Goddard's 1926 Rocket is on the left.
Ryan NYP "Spirit of St. Louis" (1927) On the morning of May 20, 1927, a young former Air Mail pilot named Charles Lindberg took off from New York in his Ryan NYP "Spirit of St. Louis" on a solo fight across the Atlantic Ocean that remains one of the best known and most daring feats in human history. After a grueling 3,610 miles and 33 hours, 30 minutes, the "Spirit of St. Louis" landed at Le Bourget Field, Paris to the wild cheers of 100,000 Parisians. Later that year, Lindberg flew his "Spirit of St. Louis" on goodwill tours of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Goddard's "P" Series Rocket (1938) Goddard continued his liquid fuel rocket experimients through 1945, when he died. During the period of 1938 to 1941, experiments were conducted with his "P" Series Rockets, which generated about 985 pounds of thrust. One "P" series rocket flew to an altitude of 300 feet on August 9, 1940, and another flew to an altitude of 250 feet on May 8, 1941. In the museum photo above, one of Goddard's "P" Series Rockets is on the left, behind the Apollo 11 Command Module.
Bell XP-59A Airacomet (1942) The Bell XP-59A Airacomet was the first American aircraft to be powered by a jet engine. Piloted by Bell Aircraft's test pilot Robert Stanley, the XP-59A made its first flight on October 1, 1942, under top secret conditions over the sands at Murdock Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base), California. The XP-59A wasn't the first jet-powered aircraft (the British Gloster Meteor and the German Me-262 came earlier), but it was one of the more successful of the early jets and entered active service with the U.S. Air Force after World War II, with a total of 50 having been built.
Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis" (1947) On October 14, 1947, Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager squeezed (broken ribs and all) into the cockpit of the Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis," was dropped from the belly of a modified B-29 bomber, and flew into the history books. The X-1 accelerated above the desert sands of Murdoc Dry Lake to a speed of Mach 1.06 (700 mph at 43,000 feet), thus breaking the sound barrier. The age of supersonic flight was born. The three original X-1 aircraft plus three followup aircraft (X-1A, X-1B, and X-1D) carried on the supersonic experimental flight program. X-1 No. 1 "Glamorous Glennis" made a total of 78 flights between 1946 and 1950.
Sputnik 1 Satellite (1957)
The first successful use of the rocket technology pioneered by Robert Goddard to place a man-made object into orbit around the Earth occurred on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union placed the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit. Sputnik 1 was a 23-inch diameter sphere weighing about 194 pounds, and on each 90-minute orbit, it broadcast a continuous "beep beep beep" signal that raised fear among many in the non-Communist world. Within months, the United States responded by forming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to spearhead an American civilian space program.
Explorer 1 Satellite (1958) [Museum photo from the National Air & Space Museum]
The United States met the Soviet challenge on January 31, 1958, with the successful launch of Explorer 1, an 80-inch long, 6-inch diameter, and 30-pound satellite that carried scientific experiments into orbit. Explorer 1 was launched by an Army Jupiter C rocket designed by Dr. Werhner von Braun. Unlike Sputnik 1, which did little more than broadcast its "beep beep beep" signal, Explorer 1's scientific equipment discovered the existence of a radiation belt surrounding the Earth, which is today known as the Van Allen Radiation Belt in honor of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's then-director, James Van Allen.
North American X-15 (1959) The flight envelope for winged aircraft was pushed to its ultimate limit by the North American X-15 research aircraft during the period of 1959 to 1968. Originally piloted by Scott Crossfield and later by Air Force and NASA test pilots, the three X-15s made a total of 199 flights that took man faster and higher than ever before possible. Dropped from the wing of a modified B-52 bomber, the X-15 was flown to a top altitude of 354,200 feet (67 miles) by pilot Joseph Walker on August 22, 1963, and to a top speed of Mach 6.72 (4,534 mph) by pilot William Knight on October 3, 1967. It is little known fact that two years before Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space, the X-15 pilots were pushing their winged craft to the edge of space in experiments that would lead directly to the design of the Space Shuttle. Eight X-15 pilots were awarded "Astronaut Wings" by the Air Force and NASA for having taken the X-15 to the edge of space (50 miles or higher).
Mercury 6 Spacecraft "Friendship 7" (1962)
Crammed into the tiny Mercury 6 Spacecraft "Friendship 7" that sat atop an Atlas rocket, on February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the Earth. Astronauts Alan Shephard and Virgil "Gus" Grissom went into space before Glenn, but theirs were short sub-orbital flights that were over in 15 minutes. Glenn's 4 hour, 55 minute flight took him around the world three times and proved that a human could survive and control a spacecraft in the weightlessness of space. During his pioneering first manned spaceflight aboard Vostok 1 on April 13, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth once, but he was essentially a passenger and did not have navigational control over his spacecraft.
Mariner 2 Planetary Probe (1962)
On December 14, 1962, the Mariner 2 Planetary Probe became the first spacecraft to fly past another planet, after having completed a 4-month, 90-million mile voyage to the vicinity of the planet Venus. Although the earlier Mariner 1 probe was destroyed on July 22, 1962, after less than 300 seconds of flight, Mariner 2's experiments transmitted back to Earth valuable information about Earth's sister planet, signaling the beginning of a long line of American, Russian, and international unmanned probes to the planets.
Gemini 4 Spacecraft (1965)
On June 3, 1965, a Titan rocket launched the Gemini 4 Spacecraft, carrying astronauts James McDivitt and Edward White II into space for a 4-day orbital mission that included America's first space walk, performed by astronaut White. These successes set the stage for the remaining eight Gemini flights of 1965 to 1966, which demonstrated that humans could not only survive in space, but that they could live for extended periods of time and work in space and, just as importantly, that they could safely join two spacecraft in orbit -- a step that was essential to future trips to the Moon. In March 1965, just 3 months before the Gemini 4 flight, Russian cosmonaut Alexi Leonov exited his Voskhod 2 spacecraft on the first human spacewalk, which lasted 10 minutes (about 1/2 half the length of White's Gemini 4 spacewalk).
Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia" (1969)
The tiny Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia" was launched by a mighty Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida on July 16, 1969, and successfully took astronauts Neal Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins from the Earth to the Moon and brought them back safely. The first landing on the Moon is considered by many to have been the single most important voyage in the history of mankind. Two other (non-landing) Apollo missions to the Moon preceded the flight of Apollo 11, and six lunar landing missions followed, with all except Apollo 13 successfully completing their missions. (Apollo 13's three astronauts were, of course, safely returned to Earth after an onboard explosion enroute to the third planned lunar landing.)
Pioneer 10 Planetary Probe (1972)
After a series of sucessful and some unsuccessful lunar and solar orbit missions of Pioneers 1 through 9, on March 3, 1972, the Pioneer 10 Planetary Probe was launched on a "pioneering" and dangerous mission to the outer solar system planet of Jupiter. Just 11 hours after launch, Pioneer 10 passed the orbit of the Moon and headed into interplanetary space. The probe entered the Asteroid Belt on July 15, 1972, emerged unscathed 7 months later, and arrived in the vicinity of Jupiter in early December 1973. During its encounter with the Jovian system, Pioneer 10 made significant measurements of the magnetic field, radiation belt, temperature, and structure of Jupiter's atmosphere and transmitted this information back to Earth along with color images of the planet. In July 1981, Pioneer 10 passed the 25 AU (an Astronautical Unit is equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun) mark, or 2.3 billion miles from Earth, and continued into interstellar space, still transmitting scientific readings back to its distant home planet.
Viking Mars Lander (1975)
Two identical Viking spacecraft were launched from the Kennedy Space Center in 1975 -- Viking 1 on August 20, 1975, and Viking 2 on September 9, 1975 -- on missions to orbit and land on Mars. As the first to arrive at the "Red Planet," the Viking 1 Mars Lander made the first successful soft landing on another planet on July 20, 1976. It was followed, on September 3, 1976, by a successful soft landing by the Viking 2 Mars Lander. The two Viking spacecraft transmitted back to Earth spectacular color images of the Martian landscape, dug trenches in the Martian soil to analyze its chemical composition and search for chemical signs of microscopic life, and took scientific readings of the Martian atmosphere. Meanwhile the Viking 1 and 2 Orbiter spacecraft took equally impressive photographs of Mars from orbit and scientific readings of the Martian atmosphere. The Viking 1 Lander continued to transmit photographs and scientific data to Earth at least through the mid-1980s.
SpaceShip One (2004) [Inflight photo from the National Space Society -
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