What is the fastest speed recorded for a jet plane?
by 
Denise McKeon
ANSWERS: 3
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NASA Jet Soars at Record Mach 7 March 27, 2004 — NASA retired a 40-year-old speed record on Saturday with the successful flight of the world's first airplane that integrates an air-breathing engine into its frame. After a lift into the skies beneath the wing of a modified B-52 bomber and a supersonic boost to 95,000 feet from a Pegasus rocket, the unpiloted experimental aircraft reached a speed more than seven times the speed of sound, shattering the Mach 3.2 record that an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane set four decades ago. The test took place shortly before 5 p.m. ET Saturday off the southern California coast. The X-43, a wedge-shaped craft that measures about 12 feet in length and weighs about 14 tons, is a scramjet, an acronym for supersonic-combustion ramjet. During flight, the flow of air through a scramjet engine remains supersonic to optimize engine efficiency and increase vehicle speed. NASA's ultimate goal is to fly at Mach 10, but during Saturday's test, the prototype X-43 aircraft reached slightly more than Mach 7. [ Source: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040322/speed.html ]
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Like the X-5, by most definitions the X-43 using a "scramjet" and being unmanned probably doesn't qualify in the typical sense as a jet plane. The X-43 achieved record breaking speeds for about 11 seconds whereas the SR-71 Blackbird cruises at near Mach 3. Also the weight of the X-43 was around 1.4 tons not 14 tons. See fastest aircraft at www.aviationtrivia.homestead.com
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The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird is, to date, the fastest airplane ever to streak across the sky, even though it's more than 30 years old. Able of speeds over 2200 miles per hour -- that's more than three times the speed of sound -- the SR-71 can fly at altitudes above 80,000 feet.
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