Mach 5 = 1,701.45 m / s... still pretty crazy fast - LA to NY in ~42 minutes - but no, not LA to NY in 2 seconds. Methinks someone plugged it into google and thought 'hey, m must mean miles, right?'

There was a great book on this that just came out this year. It's titled The Most Human Human.

Does anyone else find it prophetic that the ground station engineer working on the space elevator is named Riise? Like Dr. Frankenstein - Rise... Riise... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!!!!!!!!!

The story of John Harrison and the accurate timepiece is actually really interesting - I'd strongly recommend the book Longitude for people interested in the history of technology.