[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15395-15396]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     A NEW ABSOLUTE AIRSPEED RECORD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Knight) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KNIGHT. Madam Speaker, I am truly blessed to represent a district 
in southern California that is the home of so many historic feats.
  Today, I would like to tell you about one of those feats that turned 
50 years old today. October 3, 1967, is a date I will never forget, but 
it is probably a date I will never remember either because I was 9 
months old.
  On that date, a B-52 flew down the runway of Edwards Air Force Base 
with a small, white airplane tucked underneath her wing. A major who 
had thousands of hours in different platforms was the pilot of that 
airplane. He had been on several different programs and had been a test 
pilot for many years and was a graduate of the United States Air Force 
Test Pilot School. He was the pilot of that small, white aircraft.
  The plan was simple on paper. It was to accelerate to 100,000 feet 
and achieve a Mach of 6.50. As the pilots at Edwards Air Force Base 
will also tell you, it is a profession that they go about, and they do 
this in a very professional

[[Page 15396]]

manner. The terms were 100,000 feet and 6.50, the ending was 102,100 
feet and 6.72--a new airspeed record.

                              {time}  1015

  The interesting thing about this is that the air speed record had 
been set on November 18, 1966, by the same pilot and broken just 10 
months later. That flight has now stood for 50 years.
  If that pilot was here today, he would say that it is a travesty that 
that air speed record has stood for 50 years. In fact, I was standing 
with him on the 30th anniversary and he said just those same words: Why 
are we stuck where we were in the sixties? Why haven't we continued to 
push forward?
  I believe he was right and I believe he would be right today. I hope 
that I am not standing here on the 60th anniversary talking about the 
same issue.
  The great men of that era did some phenomenal things. They pushed the 
limits. They knew that the sky was no limit and that it was actually 
just a boundary that we needed to push forward.
  There were 12 pilots in the X-15 program. I grew up with many of them 
or their kids. There was General Rushworth, Neil Armstrong, Bob White, 
Joe Walker, Bill Dana, Joe Engle, Scott Crossfield, John McKay, Milton 
Thompson, and Forrest Petersen. Mike Adams lost his life in the X-15 
program in November 1967--the only one to lose his life in that 
program.
  The pilot of the October 3, 1967, flight was my father, Pete Knight. 
He flew the aircraft 16 times, setting the air speed record several 
times, breaking it, and then achieving 4,520 miles an hour on October 
3, 1967, which still stands today.
  I think the lesson is that we have got to keep pushing. Technology is 
not out there for no reason. It is out there for us to grab and 
continue to achieve. Those records are made to be broken. We must 
continue to push in aerospace and in every endeavor we encounter. That 
is what America does and that is what we do for all of mankind.
  I think this record was a great achievement, and I can tell you one 
quick story. I knew of this record when I was a small kid because my 
father pulled that Machmeter out of the X-15 after he set the record. 
That Machmeter sat on our television for every year of my life, until 
he was on his death bed. He said: I want that Machmeter to go to the 
Smithsonian. Which is exactly where we sent it.
  This was something that was an achievement by many engineers, pilots, 
mothership pilots, and chase pilots, but it is something that is now 50 
years old, and we need to continue to push.

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