PJ’s PERSPECTIVE
Breaking the Imagination Barrier PJ Kleffner, DTM - District Director If you get a group of people together, some are
simplest form, wings are curved on top and flat
nonchalantly satisfied with the way things are,
on the bottom. This means the length of the top
but others actively resist any change – don’t rock
surface is longer than the length of the bottom
the boat, don’t go looking for trouble. Others
surface. As air splits at the front edge of a wing,
aren’t satisfied with the status quo – they have
it must spread out more to cover the longer
a vision, a dream, the imagination that leads to breakthroughs in technology. They also scare the daylights out of those other two kinds of people. When automobiles began to gain popularity around the turn of the 20th century, many people believed that human beings were on the path
distance on top
to self-destruction – that our ever-increasing
of the wing. As it spreads,
desire for speed would be the death of us.
the air on top is thinner and has
Some of those people thought that a car would
less pressure, so the stronger
never go faster than 60 miles per hour. There
pressure on the
was a psychological barrier in their minds that
bottom pushes
resisted the idea of traveling faster than a mile
the wing up. Do
per minute. We cruise down the highways now
this fast enough to
well in excess of 60 mph, and think nothing of it.
overcome gravity and you are
Many decades later, Chuck Yeager faced the
flying. If you slow down too much, the
same limited kind of thinking when he attempted
aircraft stalls, which is the technical term for
to break the sound barrier. However, the skeptics
“drops like a rock,” instead of glides like a plane.
in the 1940’s were not just farmers - they were
These engineers also knew that cutting
highly educated engineers and scientists.In
through the air like this disturbed it, and created
hindsight, why did we fear that limit of 60 mph?
shock waves similar to the wake you see behind
After all, human beings arbitrarily divided an
a boat in water. As speeds increased, these
hour into sixty minutes.
shock waves were strong enough in some cases
However, this new limit – the speed of sound
to literally shake the plane apart, or make the
– was a natural phenomenon, a law of physics that
pilot lose control, both leading to disaster. Many
we dare not try to break. Aeronautical engineers
of these engineers believed there was a natural
were well aware of the principles of flight. In their
barrier at the speed of sound, and any attempt to
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ONE COMMUNITY
