Top Gun: Maverick exploded into theaters in the summer of 2022 and kicked things off the right way with the incredible Darkstar experimental jet sequence. This jaw-dropping prologue saw Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell finally fulfill his ultimate dream, the need for speed, by reaching the seemingly impossible level of Mach 10.
While the Darkstar itself is a fictional jet created for Top Gun: Maverick, Mach 10 is an actual unit of measurement, albeit one that no human being has ever reached, which left many fans wondering just how Maverick accomplished this feat. Outside the necessary suspension of disbelief, the truth is that Maverick would never have survived this event in the first place, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to investigate and figure out how the human body could stand up to such an incredible level of speed.
Top Gun: Maverick Starts with a Bang
The Need for Speed Outweighs That of Safety
After over three decades away from the silver screen, restarting the Top Gun franchise with a thrilling and memorable set piece was essential. To do so, filmmaker Joseph Kosinski developed the idea of this Mach 10 flight sequence to pay homage to the original film’s opening scene (and Maverick’s willingness to go out of his way to avoid following commands) in a manner that shows off how flight has evolved over the subsequent years.
To accomplish this feat, Kosinski and company created the fictional plane known as the Darkstar, an experimental jet that, according to the film’s lore, can reach incredible speeds of Mach 9 and above. The Darkstar was based on a combination of experimental jets produced by the U.S. Air Force, such as the Lockheed Martin SR-72, a vessel capable of reaching speeds as high as Mach 6. For those who might not know, the term “Mach” represents an object’s speed in comparison to the speed of sound. For instance, Mach 1 denotes the actual speed of sound (767 mph at sea level), while something like Mach 6 is six times the speed of sound.
At the beginning of Top Gun: Maverick, everyone’s favorite fighter pilot tests out how fast the Darkstar can go before his boss, Rear Admiral Cain (Ed Harris), shows up to shut him down. Maverick pushes the Darkstar not only to Mach 9 but even past that to Mach 10.2, meaning that Maverick is, at one point, theoretically traveling as fast as 7,823 mph. Impressively, Kosinski shot this scene with a real pilot in a full-scale model of a realistic aerial craft that the production company worked alongside Lockheed to produce.
How Fast Is Mach 10, Really?
More Than Anyone Can Handle
Because the speed of sound deviates due to altitude, temperature, and air density, determining the speed of Mach 10 isn’t quite as simple as multiplying the Mach factor by 767 mph. While that’s near the numerical value of Mach speed at sea level, up at 55,000 feet in the air, it’s closer to 660 mph. Both experimental planes, the SR-71 and the rumored SR-72, can reach altitudes of around 80,000 feet, meaning that their threshold for achieving the speed of sound would be a bit lower than even that.
Suppose the Darkstar can reach the same height as the SR-71, around 80,000 feet. With the difference in temperature between 40,000 and 80,000 feet being more or less negligible, Maverick’s top speed of Mach 10.2 can more accurately be projected to reach around 6,732 mph. If the plane could achieve such speeds, it would allow Maverick to fly across the entire United States in under half an hour.
In other words, the speed Maverick reaches in the Top Gun sequel is a feat that no crewed flight has ever come close to accomplishing. The X-15 pilot William J. Knight set the world record for the fastest crewed flight back in 1967 when he reached a maximum speed of Mach 6.7 (roughly 4,500 mph). It’s an unbelievable feat that still holds up today, but one that was completely blown out of the water in Maverick’s opening scene in which our titular hero pushes the Darkstar past its breaking point until it falls apart in midair. Combine that explosion with the incredible speeds that the flight reaches, and it begs but one question.
Could Maverick Really Have Survived His Mach 10 Experience?
Not Unless He Was Also Born a Superhero
As improbable as it is that Tom Cruise’s Maverick could ever reach Mach 10 in the first place, it’s even more unbelievable that he somehow survived bailing out of a plane traveling at such an incredible speed. Putting that impossibility aside (Top Gun: Maverick is an action movie, after all, and deserves a little suspension of disbelief), could Maverick have survived achieving Mach 10 during this memorable opening scene? The answer is, resoundingly, no.
Humans aren’t built to withstand the pressure of acceleration to reach Mach 10. The average person can withstand the punishment of 4-6Gs in G-force, while highly trained fighter pilots can sometimes hold up to the incredible pressures of 9Gs for a second or two. One G-force is roughly equivalent to 22 mph, meaning that even the most highly trained pilot can only survive speeds topping off at just under 200 mph. In comparison, astronauts typically only experience around 3Gs of force during a rocket launch, implying that Maverick had next to no chance to survive this (admittedly thrilling to watch) experience.
Mach 10 has only ever been reached by a spacecraft. On November 16, 2004, NASA launched the X-43A, an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle that reached Mach 10 while pushing into the atmosphere. Of course, that was an unmanned flight, and to this point in recorded history, no pilot has ever flown anything close to resembling Mach 10. When pilot William Knight achieved the seemingly impossible speed of Mach 6.7 in the late ’60s, it was due to the jet flying high above the Earth’s atmosphere, which helped reduce wind resistance and G-force. In other words, the technology the Darkstar represents is still a ways off from becoming a part of our everyday reality.
How Fast Did Top Gun: Maverick’s Cast Fly While Filming?
Not Quite Past the Point of No Return
Maverick and, by proxy, Tom Cruise might not have reached a top speed of Mach 10 while shooting Top Gun: Maverick, but that doesn’t mean he and the rest of the cast didn’t experience flying at incredible velocity. The flight sequences in Maverick were all created using actual fighter jets, which were, at times, piloted by the film’s cast with professional jet fighter pilots riding shotgun (and doing most of the actual flying). While the speeds the cast was subjected to have never been revealed, we can make some assumptions based on the aircraft they were flying.
For starters, the primary jet used in Top Gun: Maverick is the Boeing F/A 18E/18F Super Hornet. This aircraft is currently used by various arms of the United States Military, and it can reach a top speed of around 1,189 mph. Now, it’s doubtful that the film’s cast was subjected to the aircraft’s top speed, but knowing how much Tom Cruise likes to push the envelope for his action scenes, it is theoretically possible that he asked his professional co-pilot to push the limits of their plane for at least a short time so that he could experience what it felt like.
Bringing things back around to Mach speed, the F-18 is capable of reaching Mach 1.5, which is definitely a far cry from Darkstar’s reported Mach 10.2. That means the cast of Top Gun: Maverick was never in the same type of danger Maverick seemingly placed himself in by pushing the experimental jet to its uppermost limits. It turns out that Maverick wasn’t lying when he told us he felt the need for speed, even if it pushed him all the way into the danger zone.