At the height of the Cold War in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that Lockheed had developed a strategic reconnaissance aircraft so fast that no other aircraft could catch it. The SR-71 Blackbird flew at over three and a half times the speed of sound, more than two thousand miles an hour, at 88,000 feet, over sixteen miles up. Snapping photos from three times the height of Everest, pilots had to wear full pressure suits like astronauts.