Breaking the Sound Barrier
by Edwin Dorn
Honors Program Speech
April 4, 1998
Introduction
President Flawn, Honorees, ladies and gentlemen.
I am delighted to be here. After spending some 20 years in Washington, I'm not just delighted, but relieved.
Washington has become a pretty tough town. Partisan bickering seems to be at an all-time high; special prosecutors have grown thicker than ticks on a junkyard dog. So, when a senior political appointee leaves Washington, the most important thing he can say is that he left unindicted.
Two decades in Washington, and the news media never mentioned my name in connection with either money or sex. So, I finally decided it was time to give up and come on back home!
Sound Barrier
I've been a lot of places and learned a lot of things since graduating from UT. Let me tell you about one of them--breaking the sound barrier. Yeah, you heard me right. Breaking the sound barrier.
A couple of years ago, I found myself strapped into the back seat of an F-15 fighter, taking off from an air force base near Anchorage, Alaska. The pilot flew over Mount McKinley, then made a few mock attacks on some practice ranges deep in the interior.
Flying back, he asked me if I'd like to take the stick--that is, to fly the plane. I'm not a pilot; but there isn't much to flying a modern airplane at 20,000 feet. It's the takeoffs and the landings that require skill.
As I took the stick in my right hand and the throttle in my left, an image flashed through my mind. I started recalling scenes from an old movie about the quest to break the sound barrier. Fifty years ago, this was a big deal. As planes approached the speed of sound, Mach 1, their control surfaces became useless. The planes shook uncontrollably Some of them literally disintegrated in midair.
So, as I pushed the throttle forward, I recalled how Hollywood captured the climactic moment. There's a fictionalized scene of test pilot Chuck Yeager climbing into his Bell X-1 rocket plane, which was suspended beneath a huge bomber. Once Yeager is strapped in, the little rocket plane is released. Yeager flips on his rocket motors and streaks out of sight.
Then, the camera focuses on Yeager in his tiny cockpit. We see his air speed indicator moving toward Mach 1. The plane begins to vibrate violently. We watch Yeager's hands struggling with the controls. He loses radio contact with the ground.
The scene switches to an air base in the California desert, where dozens of people are standing on the runway, their eyes squinting toward the morning sky, their faces lined with anxiety.
Suddenly, they hear it. A sonic boom. Yeager's voice crackles over the radio confirming that, yes, he has broken through the sound barrier. On the ground, worried looks turn to loud cheers. A musical crescendo. End of movie.
That was on my mind as I pushed the throttle forward. Point 95 Mach. What would it feel like to break the sound barrier? Point 96 Mach. Point 97. When would I sense a change in the way the plane handled? Point 98, Point 99. Mach 1! I'd done it. Broken the sound barrier. Done something that, 50 years ago, many people believed was impossible.
Do you know what that felt like? Can you imagine the physical sensation?
Well, it felt like. . . . nothing. No vibration, no change in the cockpit sounds, or in the feel of the stick. Modern fighters are built that way. Without the air speed indicator, I would have had no way of knowing that anything had happened.
But the fact that I felt nothing does not mean that nothing happened. A shock wave emanating from the nose of the F-15 was carving a path along the ground, 20,000 feet below. When that wave hit, grazing moose bolted, nesting birds took flight, windows rattled in whatever cabins may have existed deep in the wilderness.
Metaphor
That experience is a metaphor. Often, we do things that have little effect on us, but that profoundly affect other people.
Certainly that's true in the world I just left, the world of public policy making. We made decisions affecting thousands, even millions of people. But we could not predict the precise effects of our actions, and often we never met the people who were affected.
Each of us is in that position; each of us does things, says things, without knowing how others will be affected.
Trust me. Each of you makes a difference. You've made an impression on your friends, on your professors, on your parents. Smart as you are, however, and perceptive as you are, you probably don't know exactly what that effect has been.
Closing
I want to close by asking you to keep one thing in mind. Every day, with every interaction, you have the potential to make a difference in someone's life. Try to make it a positive difference.
If there's an occasion for criticism, try to make it constructive criticism. If there's an occasion for thanks, seize it; because we don't say "thanks" enough. (Speaking of which, let's thank Peter Flawn for agreeing to lead this University for a second time, while the Board of Regents sought a new president.)
And if there's an occasion for celebration, then enjoy it, savor it. Today is a time for celebration. You're honor students at one of the world's greatest universities. You're learning things that were not known when I was an undergraduate. You're using tools that my classmates and I could not have imagined.
You have enormous potential; you're going to break a lot of barriers. Just remember: someone is going to feel your shock wave.
