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Official records versus unofficial. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird holds the official Air Speed Record for a crewed airbreathing jet engine aircraft with a speed of 3,530 km/h (2,190 mph). The record was set on 28 July 1976 by Eldon W. Joersz and George T. Morgan Jr. near Beale Air Force Base, California, USA.
The SR-71 was the world's fastest and highest-flying air-breathing operational manned aircraft throughout its career and it still holds that record. On 28 July 1976, SR-71 serial number 61-7962, piloted by then Captain Robert Helt, broke the world record: an "absolute altitude record" of 85,069 feet (25,929 m).
The X-15 was built by two manufacturers: North American Aviation was contracted for the airframe in November 1955, and Reaction Motors was contracted for building the engines in 1956. Like many X-series aircraft, the X-15 was designed to be carried aloft and drop launched from under the wing of a B-52 mother ship.
3. The NASA X-43 was an experimental unmanned hypersonic aircraft with multiple planned scale variations meant to test various aspects of hypersonic flight. It was part of the X-plane series and specifically of NASA 's Hyper-X program developed in the late 1990s. [1] It set several airspeed records for jet aircraft.
The first aircraft to fly supersonic in level flight was the American Bell X-1 experimental plane which was powered by a 6,000-pound (2,700 kg) thrust rocket powered by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. Most supersonic aircraft have been military or experimental aircraft. Aviation research during World War II led to the creation of the first ...
Developed from. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25. The Mikoyan MiG-31 (Russian: Микоян МиГ-31; NATO reporting name: Foxhound) is a supersonic interceptor aircraft developed for the Soviet Air Forces by the Mikoyan design bureau as a replacement for the earlier MiG-25 "Foxbat"; the MiG-31 is based on and shares design elements with the MiG-25. [ 2 ]
The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as the first piloted aircraft of any type to exceed 1,000 kilometres per hour (620 mph) in level flight.
The fastest airbreathing jet aircraft is the unmanned X-43 scramjet at around Mach 9–10. The fastest manned (rocket) aircraft is the X-15 at Mach 6.85. The Space Shuttle, while far faster than the X-43 or X-15, was not regarded as an aircraft during ascent as it was carried ballistically by rocket thrust, rather than the air. During re-entry ...