At Mach 3, friction with the atmosphere raised the SR-71’s skin temperatures to a searing 500 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to make the fuselage glow red.

Lockheed Martin’s SR-72 Son of Blackbird or “Darkstar” aims to replace the SR-71 with hypersonic ISR—and possibly strike—using a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) that blends a turbofan for ...

Hypersonic flight (speeds faster than Mach 5) is the perceived future of human aviation. In order to achieve that vision, engineers need to develop hybrid engines capable of handling subsonic, ...