Three minutes to drop.

Are you ready?

I'm ready with you one.

Okay, here we go. At the countdown.

It was the late 50s, early 60s.

Rather, the Air Force and NACA at the time, the predecessor to NASA, that created a series of aircraft that would go very fast, the X-Series, all flown in the Yellow Valley,

ultimately culminating in what still is the fastest man flight in the X-15 back in the early 60s by Pete Knight.

On October 3rd, 1967, Major William Pete Knight set the world aircraft speed record flying the X-15,

a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. He flew at Mach 6.7 or 4,520 miles per hour,

and as Eric Knutzen mentioned, Pete Knight holds the record to this date.

The need to go fast is part of our DNA.

From the invention of the wheel to the invention of the hypersonic X-15, humans have been fascinated with moving faster. If you've driven a sports car, road roller coasters, or plunged your bike down a steep hill, you know the exhilaration of an adrenaline rush.

You know, human beings are kind of bound by perspective, right?

When you're walking along the street, then somebody on a bicycle or in a car is fast.

But when you look up in the sky and see something streaking across the sky, that kind of redefines what fast is.

We see a lot of airliners go across the sky,

and we see private jets.

Typically, the first time that someone sees a combat aircraft

in full afterburner across the sky,

it's pretty eye-opening.

This is Atherton-Karty, director of the Technologies Roadmaps Organization.

Folks that have seen, for instance, the SR-71 at Mach 3 and 70,000 feet,

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