But if there were ever a point that a pilot would turn back, if there were ever a moment that he was going to give up, it would be at the moment just before he made the breakthrough -- because that is where the forces were concentrated. Was the barrier always there and somehow we just discovered it? No. The barrier is actually created by the speed of the plane as it moves one laywer of air against the other. The barrier gets built up and the plane meets more resistance. As it continued to encounter its self-generated barrier, the pilot discovered that the more he accelerated the more the plane would vibrate, shake, and want to break up and fall out of the sky as it approached Mach One. Many a plane turned back at that point, if not before. How scary it was for those first pilots to make Mach One. But it had to get just enough trust/thrust to get through that barrier.
The Abortion Buster, Click It