On July 17, 1962, White flew to an altitude of 314,750 feet, more than 59 miles high. That was well above the 50-mile altitude the Air Force accepted as the start of space, earning him the service's first rating as a "winged astronaut." At the time, only four other Americans, all Mercury astronauts, had gone into space.
During the previous year, White had become the first person to fly a winged craft several times the speed of sound at Mach 4, Mach 5 and then — at full throttle — to Mach 6, or more than 4,000 mph.
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