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Q: Aviation & Manned Space Exploration Milestones ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Aviation & Manned Space Exploration Milestones
Category: Science > Technology
Asked by: nosecone1023-ga
List Price: $20.00
Posted: 31 May 2004 21:16 PDT
Expires: 30 Jun 2004 21:16 PDT
Question ID: 354563
Excluding the Apollo moon missions, starting with Kitty Hawk in 1903,
what are the top 25 milestones in Aviation and Manned Space
Exploration in the last 100 years?
Answer  
Subject: Re: Aviation & Manned Space Exploration Milestones
Answered By: sublime1-ga on 31 May 2004 23:04 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi again nosecone...

I'll leave it to you to decide the 'top' 25 milestones.

Here are 45 to choose from:


Milestones in Flight

17 DECEMBER 1903: The American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright
make the first controlled, sustained flight in a heavier-than-air
craft in a biplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight
(with Orville as pilot) lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet.
The final flight of the day carried Wilbur 852 feet in 59 seconds.

1907
Paul Cornu, a French inventor, makes the first helicopter flight,
hovering 1 foot above the ground for 20 seconds.

1908
Madame Therese Peltier is the first woman to fly solo in an airplane.

25 JULY 1909: The Frenchman Louis Bleriot makes the first flight
from France to England in his Bleriot XI monoplane, flying from
Les Baraques near Calais to a field outside Dover in 37 minutes.

1911
Harriet Quimby becomes the first American woman to receive a
Fédération Aéronautic Internationale (FAI) pilot?s license.

1918
The U.S. Post Office begins airmail service from the Polo Grounds
in Washington, D.C.

14 JUNE 1919: The Britons John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown
make the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in a Vickers 
Vimy, from St John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden in Ireland.

1919
The first sustained international commercial passenger air 
service is started between Paris and Brussels.

1921
Bessie Coleman becomes the first African- American woman to 
receive a Fédération Aéronautic Internationale (FAI) pilot?s 
license.

1924
Two Douglas World Cruisers from the U.S. Army Air Service 
complete the first around the world flight.

1926
Robert Goddard launches the world?s first liquid propellant rocket.

20-21 MAY 1927: The American Charles Lindbergh makes the first 
solo flight across the Atlantic in The Spirit of St Louis, flying
from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, to Le Bourget, Paris. 
[The flight was nonstop, in a modified Ryan M-2 monoplane.]

1929
Lt. James H. Doolittle becomes the first pilot to fly completely 
guided by instruments and radio from takeoff to landing.

1930
Amy Johnson is the first woman to fly solo between England and 
Australia.

1933
Wiley Post makes the first solo around-the-world flight in Winnie 
Mae, his Lockheed Vega.

1935
Douglas Aircraft Company introduces the DC-3, the first successful
passenger airliner; Boeing introduces the B-17 Flying Fortress 
four-engine bomber.

1940
The Boeing Stratoliner, the first airliner with a pressurized cabin,
makes its first flight.

15 MAY 1941: The first jet flies at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, a
Gloster E28/39 powered by an engine developed by Sir Frank Whittle.

1941
Igor I. Sikorsky sets a national helicopter record by hovering for
1 hour 5 minutes.

1942
Five aviation cadets earn their wings at Tuskegee Army Air Field 
and become the nation?s first black military pilots. Among these 
graduates is Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., later the first 
African-American brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force.

1943
Boeing begins production of the B-29 Superfortress bomber.

14 OCTOBER 1947: The American test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the 
sound barrier - Mach 1, about 700mph at sea level - in the 
experimental Bell XS-1 aircraft over Muroc Army Air base in 
California. [The X-1 was launched from the bomb bay of a Boeing
B-29.]

1953
Jacqueline Cochran is the first woman to pilot an aircraft 
supersonically in a North American F-86 Sabre Jet.

1954
Boeing introduces the 707, the first successful passenger jet.

4 OCTOBER 1957: The space age begins as the Russians launch 
Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, a craft about the 
size of a basketball, orbiting the Earth in 98 minutes.

1958
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is established under
the leadership of retired Air Force General Elwood R. Quesada.

12 APRIL 1961: The Russian air force lieutenant Yuri Gagarin 
becomes the first person to escape the gravity of the Earth 
in making the first manned space flight in Vostok 1, completing
a single orbit of the globe in 108 minutes.

1962
John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth.

1963
Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in
space.

1967
North American X-15 jet-powered experimental aircraft sets speed
record of more than 4,534 miles per hour.

21-27 DECEMBER 1968: The American astronauts Frank Borman, Bill
Anders and Jim Lovell, the crew of Apollo Eight, become the first
men to leave the vicinity of the Earth when they orbit the Moon
and return.

2 MARCH 1969: First flight in Toulouse, south-west France, of 
Concorde, the Anglo-French aircraft which became the only 
supersonic jetliner to fly commercially. Concorde was in service
for more than 27 years, from 1976 to 2003.


20 JULY 1969: Man walks on the moon. The American astronauts 
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step down from the lunar module
of the US spacecraft Apollo 11 in "one giant leap for mankind".
[Neil was first to step down.]

1971
The Soviet Union launches Salyut 1, the world?s first space station.

1973
United States launches Skylab, the first U.S. space station.

1977
North American Rockwell space shuttle completes its first landing.

1978
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet makes its first flight;
the Double Eagle II completes the first successful hot-air balloon
flight across the Atlantic.

20 APRIL 1981: The space shuttle, the first reusable spacecraft,
makes a successful flight into and back from space. Columbia,
the first shuttle, piloted by John Young and Robert Crippen,
takes off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and makes 36 orbits
of the Earth before returning two days later to Edwards Air
Force Base in California.

1983
Sally Ride becomes the first U.S. woman in space; Guion Bluford
becomes the first African-American in space.

1986
Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan make the first nonstop flight around
the world without refueling in their specially designed aircraft,
Voyager.

1990
Space Shuttle Discovery deploys the Hubble Space Telescope.

1994
The 777, the first airplane to be designed entirely on a computer,
makes its first flight.

1995
The Global Positioning System becomes fully operational.

1999
Eileen Collins, on Space Shuttle Columbia, becomes the first woman
commander on a U.S. space mission.

2001
Boeing announces plans to develop the Sonic Cruiser, a new passenger
airplane concept.

March 27, 2004: The second X-43A hypersonic research aircraft was
carried aloft by NASA's B-52B launch aircraft. A white trail
shooting across the clear blue sky off the southern California
coast showed Nasa's unpiloted X-43A machine reaching Mach 7, or
just under 5,000mph, and setting a new world speed record for a
jet-powered aircraft.


This is an integrated list, created from entries on two websites.

Entries with a month and day come from a sidebar on a page
from millenium-debate.org which discusses the X-43A:
http://millennium-debate.org/ind29mar044.htm

Entries with the year only come from Boeing's webpage
about 'Dreamers who Made A Difference':
http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/wonder_of_flight/timeline.html

Information in [brackets] are additional facts from the 
duplicate entry on the other site.


Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that  
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog  
established through the "Request for Clarification" process. 

sublime1-ga


Searches done, via Google:

"aviation milestones" "kitty hawk" apollo
://www.google.com/search?q=%22aviation+milestones%22+%22kitty+hawk%22+apollo

aviation milestones site:www.centennialofflight.gov
://www.google.com/search?q=aviation+milestones+site%3Awww.centennialofflight.gov

"aviation milestones" site:www.centennialofflight.gov
://www.google.com/search?q=%22aviation+milestones%22+site%3Awww.centennialofflight.gov

"milestones of flight" site:www.centennialofflight.gov
://www.google.com/search?q=%22milestones+of+flight%22+site%3Awww.centennialofflight.gov

"milestones in flight"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22milestones+in+flight%22

Request for Answer Clarification by nosecone1023-ga on 02 Jun 2004 05:57 PDT
Where possible, could you supply the altitude and distance traveled?

Clarification of Answer by sublime1-ga on 02 Jun 2004 12:33 PDT
nosecone...

Eek! Had the additional factors of altitude and distance traveled
been in the original question, I would have avoided it entirely
at the posted price, since it would require research independent
of what I already did, amounting to (rough estimate) another
fifteen (15) hours, or more, of research (at the conservative
estimate of 20 minutes per each of the 45 incidents).

Since researchers are paid 75% of the posted question price,
this would mean getting paid about $1 per hour.

I have to respectfully submit that what you are requesting is
beyond the scope of the original question, and that you might
consider posting a new question, referencing the milestones
in this one, and requesting the distances and altitudes of
each incident, bearing in mind the research this will require
when you set the price.

I'm also reasonably certain that, in some instances, the 
distance and altitude were not recorded, since they were 
not pertinent to the record being set, as in "the first 
woman to fly solo in an airplane", so basing the success
of the answer on finding statistics for all incidents
will likely result in the question being avoided.

I would also add that, if the information you are now
requesting had been readily available as a result of the
research I already conducted, I would gladly submit it 
here, but it was not available from the resources I 
utilized.

Best regards...

sublime1-ga
nosecone1023-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars

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