If the aircraft is fast and stealthy, there is a good chance it was designed and built by Lockheed Martin. That includes “Darkstar,” the reusable, piloted hypersonic aircraft flown by Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. The airplane used in the movie is now on display at the Palm Springs Air Museum in California.
For the unfamiliar, Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the original film. Maverick is still a naval aviator, highly decorated, but with an uncanny ability to get into just enough trouble to keep from getting promoted out of the cockpit. He is the test pilot for the hypersonic Darkstar scramjet. We’re never told explicitly what Darkstar’s mission is, but it is noted that the government wants to pull the funding for the project in part because it hasn’t yet reached the contract spec of Mach 10 (7672.691 mph).
