Some other interesting moments of aeronautical derring-do:<p>Imagine piloting an unpowered aircraft with no wings which could best be described as a "flying bathtub" and by "flying" what is meant is "falling". This is the M2-F{1,2,3}, designed to test lifting body aerodynamics and unpowered landings, much of this research helped in the design of the shuttle orbiter. But in 1967 pilot Bruce Peterson was involved in a spectacular crash that was later used in the opening of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, he survived: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvGJhJINlc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvGJhJINlc</a><p>Also consider the X-15. Unlike the SR-71 the X-15 didn't cruise around at high speeds it just accelerated to very high speeds using a rocket engine and then glided. These aircraft, dropped off the wing of a B-52, these aircraft would eventually travel up to nearly mach 7 and over 100 km altitude. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15</a><p>Also it's worth considering that the Space Ship One rocket powered sub-orbital space plane gets up to around mach 3 on ascent: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne</a><p>Or, consider the Apollo 10 spacecraft, which reentered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of nearly 40,000 kph after returning from the moon (over ten times the highest recorded speed of the SR-71).