The fastest jet in human history was built in 1964 and remains undefeated to date

The SR-71 Blackbird tearing over the Bay Area. Every square mile of land below this jet is packed with AI superclusters, autonomous vehicles, and trillions of dollars in modern compute and yet … none of it has ever produced a faster crewed aircraft than this titanium beast from 1964. Drafted by hand with pencils and slide rules before the pocket calculator even existed. It cruised at Mach 3.3 (2,193 mph) at 85,000 feet, outrunning over 4,000 surface-to-air missiles simply by pushing the throttles forward. 60+ years later, it remains utterly undefeated.