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Did it work?

X-43 #3 now sleeps with the fishes after 10 seconds of hypersonic flight with an estimated peak speed of about Mach 9.7 (this will likely change somewhat as the numbers get crunched). That's roughly 7,000 miles an hour or 100 times highway speed.

It is the fastest anything that breathes air has ever gone. The previous record was about Mach 6.8, set by X-43 #2 back in March (#1 squibbed and had to be destroyed).

The record setting Blackbird reconnaissance plane's fastest version, the A-12, was limited to Mach 3.2 and is the fastest manned air-breathing aircraft, ever. SpaceShip One achieved a peak Mach of 3.5 in the climb and 3.9 on re-entry, which is the fastest a private manned craft has gone. The fastest non-orbital manned craft was the X-15 research plane which set an unofficial record of Mach 6.7 (which was faster than the designers expected). Of course, orbital machines achieve 18,000 to 25,000 miles an hour to break free of Earth gravity.

A high-velocity working SCRAMJET is huge for several reasons:

It's been postulated for decades, but never achieved. (I first read about it in a model rocketry magazine almost forty years ago!)
Unlike rockets, a SCRAMJET draws its oxidizer from the atmosphere -- no need to schlep a great big tank of LOX or H2O2 around.
It has potential for a first stage of a Two Stage To Orbit reusable spaceplane -- like SpaceShipOne to the next order of complexity/difficulty. If you can launch from 7,000 mph your orbital machine just went way down in weight and therefore cost and everything else.
It has potential for extremely fast freight and possibly passenger service. "I can have it on your desk in Tokyo by afternoon; London tells me they had it on the morning SCRAMJET."
It has the potential for economical, hard-to-intercept reconnaissance vehicles and cruise missiles.

So I guess you could say... it did work!

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F