For those high speed dashes when you just can’t bear to go commercial, fire up the SR-71 and you can travel from Los Angeles to Washington in about an hour! I can’t say how accurate the flight models are for these more exotic airplanes, but they are certainly fun to fly and can be a real challenge to land.
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At the ultra far end of the “exotic” spectrum are the space planes. Go aloft in the X-15 to get air dropped by the NASA B-52. See if you can better the record set by the X-15 of Mach 6.7 and 354,200 feet! It only counts if you manage to recover the airplane at Edwards (something I haven’t been able to do!).
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You can also fly a Space Shuttle re-entry profile all the way from orbit to touchdown or select a landing from the final approach. Managing the energy on this 215,000 lb. glider is a real challenge! Again, the panel is a rudimentary design, but the actual flying is the attraction. Here we are on the steep final approach to Edwards.
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