Not content to let daredevil make history—not for all mankind but for Red BULL – GEN. CHUCK YEAGER, 89, breaks the sound barrier AGAIN!
Yeager whose iconoclastic king of cool test pilot demeanor defined generation of RIGHT STUFF that brought man to the moon was not content to take a back seat as Felix Baumgartner, sponsored by Red Bull (“It gives you wiiiings”), made a sub-space dive into history.
Baumgartner after a weather delay made his pay-for-play sky dive for the corporate energy drink on the 65th anniversary of a true milestone in American history – Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
Baumgartner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, according to preliminary data, and became the first man to reach supersonic speed without traveling in a jet or a spacecraft
The 89-year-old Yeager" flew in the back seat Sunday of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California's Mojave Desert — the same area where he first “pushed the envelope” in an experimental rocket plane X-1 – that was nicknamed the “Glamorous Glennis” for his wife.
The F-15 carrying Yeager took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas and broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. Sunday, exactly 65 years to the minute the then-Air Force test pilot made history.
Yeager told reporters after his flight that he was unaware of the skydiver's jumping-off.
As well, why should he — as it was nothing more than corporate event — more Evel Knievel than Neil Armstrong.
Asked by a young fan girl if he was scared breaking the sound barrier yet again, Yeager joked, "Yeah, I was scared — to death."
But Yeager, whose unflappable cool, is the stuff of aviation legend said it was just another flight to him.
