sound barrier
Noun
Meaning
the increase in aerodynamic drag as an airplane approaches the speed of sound
Source: WordNetSynonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
By the time the sound barrier was broken, much of the subsonic and low supersonic aerodynamics knowledge had matured.
Leonov believes the first boom he heard was that of the jet breaking the sound barrier, and the second was Gagarin's plane crashing.
Edwards Air Force Base in California’s High Desert is well-known for its firsts; first flights of aircraft, first time breaking the sound barrier, first shuttle landing site, and the list goes on.
This rapid increase in drag led aerodynamicists and aviators to disagree on whether supersonic flight was achievable until the sound barrier was broken for the first time in 1947 using the Bell X-1 aircraft.
This latter message, in particular, broke the sound barrier.
Yet we are also convinced that a sound barrier will eventually have to be built.