

Story of the Mach 3.18 breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird - marvin
http://www.916-starfighter.de/SR-71_Waever.htm

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mechanical_fish
_Air density at high altitude is insufficient to resist a body's tumbling
motions, and centrifugal forces high enough to cause physical injury could
develop quickly._

Holy crap. You can be _spun_ to death.

Let's not even _ask_ how this fact was established. Let's just say that, if
you know a test pilot, you should probably buy them a beer.

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patrocles
"The next day, our flight profile was duplicated on the SR-71 flight simulator
at Beale AFB, Calif. The outcome was identical. Steps were immediately taken
to prevent a recurrence of our accident."

Anyone else feel that testing before actual flight makes more sense? wtf....

~~~
mechanical_fish
Who has time for unit testing? We'll do that after we ship.

Seriously, though, there's a lot of phase space in a typical SR-71 flight, and
not a lot of time to explore it all. It's a lot easier to home in on the bug
once you know it's there...

~~~
marvin
If you ask me, that was a pretty expensive bug...

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jksmith
Indeed. What a great site also. The F104 was like the aircraft version of the
Venus de Milo - you just can't stop looking at it. A great example where a
solution to a need (at that time, need for a high-speed interceptor)
transcended the solution itself.

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muriithi
That was an incredibly lucky pilot!

~~~
mechanical_fish
The really lucky part was that he got to tell this story for decades
afterwards.

I figure that the only reason to be a test pilot is the pleasure of telling
stories like this one.

