Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18

Some other interesting moments of aeronautical derring-do:

Imagine piloting an unpowered aircraft with no wings which could best be described as a "flying bathtub" and by "flying" what is meant is "falling". This is the M2-F{1,2,3}, designed to test lifting body aerodynamics and unpowered landings, much of this research helped in the design of the shuttle orbiter. But in 1967 pilot Bruce Peterson was involved in a spectacular crash that was later used in the opening of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, he survived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvGJhJINlc

Also consider the X-15. Unlike the SR-71 the X-15 didn't cruise around at high speeds it just accelerated to very high speeds using a rocket engine and then glided. These aircraft, dropped off the wing of a B-52, these aircraft would eventually travel up to nearly mach 7 and over 100 km altitude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Also it's worth considering that the Space Ship One rocket powered sub-orbital space plane gets up to around mach 3 on ascent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne

Or, consider the Apollo 10 spacecraft, which reentered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of nearly 40,000 kph after returning from the moon (over ten times the highest recorded speed of the SR-71).

He mentions that it was his "first ever parachute landing", but I can't imagine a SR-71 test pilot wouldn't have been trained in parachute landings. Any idea why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvB5AE6HlE describes "Aircraft Ejection & Parachute Training, ADC Life Support Training School, 1968, US Air Force" - so we can infer that since ejection and parachute training did happen in times contemporary to this account, and since test pilot is a high risk activity (especially back in the time when test pilots were actually pushing the flight envelope instead of just validating numerical models), the author did receive that training.

But even for test pilots, ejection is a rare and traumatic event : finding oneself landing with no injury at all after a high speed ejection is very lucky - the design of the B-58, XB-70, F-111, Space Shuttle and some of the B-1A prototypes with an escape crew capsule is a consequence of that, though it seems that the weight and space tradeoff has fallen out of favor. Apart from speed, the mere impact of the charge that propels the seat is enough to cause spinal injury, even if the pilot managed to get his spine in perfectly upright position before ejecting.

Here's a video of another high speed Blackbird breakup, from a D-21 drone release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyC2urCl_4

The debris just keeps on going because of the huge momentum and thin air at those speeds and altitudes.

I think the technical term would be "super-chromatic peril sensitive faceplate."