The HTV-3X hypersonic Scramjet could travel from New York to Tokyo in two hours. “If it works.”

The world’s fastest jet, the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That’s about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15 — nearly 10,000 mph.

More. And. Also. Plus.

Photographs taken from the space shuttle Endeavour, August 2007.

Further to this and this, here’s a third clip from the BBC’s Planets series, taken from the episode Moon. Here, Farouk El-Baz explains how Apollo astronauts honed their geological skills – and how a sizeable piece of Flagstaff, Arizona, was given a radical lunar makeover.

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More background here and here. The entire Planets series can be downloaded here.

Further to Friday’s post on The Planets series, here’s another short extract, taken from the episode Atmosphere. In it, we follow Joe Kittinger’s 1960 balloon ride to an altitude of 103,000 feet (20 miles / 32 km), where, technically, he became the first man in space. Thanks to automated cameras, we also follow Kittinger’s unorthodox – and perilous – return to Earth. Extraordinary.

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Parts one through six of The Planets can be viewed online here.

Related. And. Also. (H/T, The Thin Man.)

Via The Thin Man, here’s an extract from the first episode of the BBC’s acclaimed documentary series, The Planets. Broadcast in 1999, the series remains one of the most lavish and comprehensive accounts of astronomical discovery and space exploration, with previously unseen archive footage, most notably from Russia. There’s also a memorable score by Jim Meacock. Recommended.

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The first two episodes, Different Worlds and Terra Firma, can be viewed in full and downloaded here. Subsequent episodes should be posted over the next few days.

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