Abstract: The high-temperature gas dynamics was originated from significant changes of macroscopic laws of the gas flows due to physical property changes of the gas mediums when its temperature become extremely high, which goes beyond basic assumptions and research scopes of the gas dynamics. The high-temperature gas dynamics was developed as the core technology for the next generation of aerospace industries is ceaselessly explored when human activities greatly are expanding into the space. This discipline is one of the best models of the engineering science and leads to the development and innovation of the gas dynamics which is pushed forward by the mechanism of application-driven-research. Four dominant research areas of the high-temperature gas dynamics are selected in this paper to conduct a general review with discussions, hoping to help more or less the development of high-temperature gas dynamics. The first area is about hypersonic ground test facilities and measurement technologies. Three typical high-enthalpy shock tunnels were introduced and have been applied to generate the flow velocity of 1.5 - 10 km/s at flight altitudes of 20-100 km. The advanced test facilities are very important for the frontier expansion of disciplines and the discovery of new phenomena in fluid flow physics. The progress in the research area also highlights this truth. The second area is about theories and experiments of hypersonic gas flows, which include their physical and mathematical models, computational methods and results of experimental observations and measurements. Among them, the development of gas physical models is much slower than expected since it is still limited to applications and improvements of the early-developed physical models. The computational method has been developed rapidly, so there are more and more flow phenomena that can be simulated. The progress on the experimental research also is promising due to some large test-model experiments that reproduced model-scaled effects of the hypersonic flow experiments, from which the high-temperature gas physics phenomena revealed is well consistent with hypersonic flight tests. The third one is about supersonic combustion and scramjet engines. This is a research field that has been hot for several decades, during which theoretical and technical researches had achieved a great progress and flight tests have also yielded fruitful results. However, the development of scramjet engines still cannot meet engineering needs and the scramjet engine theory still has difficulties to explain the problems encountered. Therefore, the research of the supersonic combustion and the scramjet engines urgently needs theoretical innovation and technological breakthroughs. The last is about detonation physics and oblique detonation engines. The oblique detonation engine was both almost in the same time with the scramjet engine together, and its research has received a renewed attention only from the beginning of this century. There have been innovative breakthroughs in detonation theory and oblique detonation research since then. And also, a great progress has been made in the standing oblique detonation engine and the hypersonic shock tunnel technology. The oblique detonation engine accepts the unique pressure-gain combustion phenomenon in nature, having the fastest combustion speed, the highest thermal efficiency for its thermal cycle and low heat loads so that it would have a great advantage over others. Finally, the theories, technologies and experiments are summarized about the four research areas of the high-temperature gas dynamics, with which it is expected to provide this discipline with some useful enlightenments.