Key Points and Summary - The SR-71 Blackbird, the world's fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, held its speed record not because of its airframe's limits, but due to a crucial safety restriction on ...

Numeric designation suggests a lot, and the Bell X-1 was indeed a special aircraft. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1, and the plane ushered in the modern age of supersonic flight. The X ...

Key Points and Summary - The North American XB-70 Valkyrie embodied a once-dominant creed: outrun defenses at Mach 3 and 70,000 feet. -The prototype proved the physics—compression-lift wingtips, ...

Airplane performance specifications don’t often make the news anymore. The tempo of aerospace development has slowed since the earlier eras of jet technology, when speed and altitude seemed to be ...

A Boeing F-15 is still quite fast, but not nearly Mach 3, the company’s program manager said on Feb. 23, correcting a previous statement. “Mach 2.497 is what we can get out of the Eagle jet and that’s ...