Shock and awe: The quest for speed on land, sea, and air has been one of the primary drivers for science and technology development by humans. On this path, the science that underlies technology for future sustainable hypersonic flight is perhaps the pinnacle. This false-color Schlieren image of Mach 6 flow over a cone-cylinder body in a wind tunnel reveals an intricate and beautiful pattern of shock waves and density gradients at an instant in time. This flow is highly unsteady, with the shock waves executing self-sustained large-scale fore-and-aft oscillations along the length of the body. The image, with its rich detail, is a metaphorical representation of the complex flow physics at play in general in the hypersonic regime. Effective engineering of such flows demands a mastery of the science that drives them!