On the road with a business trip the past couple of days, I missed this news story:

(Ranger, Ga.-AP, April 20, 2006) - Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said.

Searchers with the Civil Air Patrol and others discovered the wreckage of the plane Thursday afternoon but didn't immediately identify the body inside.

Crossfield was the Lance Armstrong of rocket planes. If the Air Force had been given the space franchise instead of NASA (or rather, if they had been allowed to keep it) he would have been the first man in space, beating Yuri Gagarin by about a year.

So long, Scott. And thanks.