Indeed, Mach 3.5 is the declared top speed in this story, but higher speeds are implied.
The Mach eases to 3.5 as we crest 80,000 feet... Screaming past Tripoli, our phenomenal speed continues to rise... I realize that I still have my left hand full-forward and we're continuing to rocket along in maximum afterburner... The TDI now shows us Mach numbers, not only new to our experience but flat out scary.
He mentions unusually cool temperatures allowing higher speeds than usual, and the aircraft is performing better than ever. So who knows. 3.6? Did a perfect set of circumstances, mixed with a rather urgent need to depart, take them closer to 3.7?
It's truly incredible that the A12/SR-71 aircraft was designed without the benefit of modern computing. In Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works" I recall there a bit about a comment that somebody once made regarding Kelly Johnson, something like "That Swede can see air". Truly a compliment to Johnson's almost uncanny ability to design aircraft for a specification. The U2 was another example of such ability.
> It's truly incredible that the A12/SR-71 aircraft was designed without the benefit of modern computing.
One of the huge things that computers give us is the ability to simulate where the design limits actually are - you can "relatively" easily design a device that needs to do "at least X" but once you're done, you don't really know how far past X you can go - computer simulations can help discover where and what exactly fails.
(Some limits like boat "hull speed" are easier to find than others).
It's actually an interesting problem from a "total effort" viewpoint.
There's zero reason to design a kitchen to last 100 years if the average one will be remodeled in 7 and even the oldest won't go past 20.
But other things can be designed to last significantly longer, and be used way past their "original expected lifespan" - many of the buildings in Europe, for example, have lasted centuries.
There are also other factors. Imagine you gave a 500yo bridge that is low maintenance and has stood the test of time and all those nice things, but you can't carry the weight of modern vehicles, or if it's not wide enough for modern vehicles etc etc
One of the many tradeoffs in design is how much do you want to spend in preparing for anticipated future demands.
Striking example in my home town of Zagreb. Communist city planners at the time designed new neighbourhood with plenty of parking space because one day productivity advancements will give every family a car to own and they need to have a place to park it!
A few decades later you couldnt find a parking space anywhere because every family had two or three cars!
The computer allows you to cut down your design so that it will do "at least X and no more" so you can save a few cents and then the plane falls apart when the pilot asks it to do Mach 3.6 but that's OK because the manual said it will top out at 3.5
Titanium is very common in the Earth's crust. But turning titanium minerals into pure, ductile titanium metal is more energy intensive and complex than making most other metals:
At the time, the USSR had already invested significant resources into making titanium for submarines. Buying titanium under false pretenses was easier than increasing the domestic industrial capacity for making titanium, particularly when the plane was not going to be produced in large numbers.
Also the Papa-class (only one built), which preceded the Alfa and remains the fastest submarine ever built. And the Sierra-class submarines which followed the Alfa class.
I think it's mostly anecdotal (I have heard it too, but I can't think of where)
Not a metallurgist, but if I had to guess it was hard to find in large enough quantities at the time. I also understand that it's a lot harder to work with than say aluminum or steel
Speaking of which, King Louis served his guests with aluminum silverware, since at the time it was more valuable than gold due to the difficulty of extracting it at the time, despite its abundance.
In the alpine climbing world Soviet climbers used titanium gear that was considered very good and light. Some of it was from scraps and spare material, but they had access to titanium.
Temperature is the limiting factor for speed, I remember SR71 pilots on a panel saying the aircraft flew faster in winter than in the summer for that reason.
It's also cool that the whole thing was machined 'loose' so that it would expand as it heated up. Apparently the plane would leak fuel and oil when it was on the ground ...
I'm fuzzy on details but I remember reading it had some pretty crazy thermal expansion. I think the pilot had to wait quite a while (hours?) before opening the cockpit to give the plane time to cool enough.
Such a great book that is becoming harder to find a decent copy of these days.
There's a great sketch that Kelly Johnson did of the A12. This was in September of 1958(!) and he had a rough top speed of Mach 3.0, with a possibility of Mach 3.2. And it existed on nothing but a sheet of paper and in his mind. No computers with advanced software and super computers with petaflops of power.
First time I've seen that sketch, but it looks like Popular Science lifted it directly for an article from the 80's that I remember distinctly about Project Aurora.
Adrian Newley is aerodynamist and the current chief designer of Red Bull (current champions and top of the season). He has won more F1 champions than any other designer.
He draws his cars on paper.
Granted, I'm sure someone digitizes his designs and runs them through a CFD suite, if for no other reason that wind tunnel time rule limited.
It’s a nice story to read about rock star engineers but F1 race car aerodynamics is not done on paper.
Sure concepts to try can be sketched out on paper. Things like wing arrangements, rough intuitive ideas about where the clean and dirty air is. But everything in F1 is an iterative loop between a lap time simulation, vehicle dynamics, and aerodynamics.
Vehicle performance is largely a trade off between Cornering dynamics (typically demanding more downforce) and straight light speed (typically demanding less drag) which is why different tracks have different setups.
Basically balanced between cornering sections and straight line sections to figure out the optimal balance of lift/drag and the dynamic behaviour of the rest of the car in response to those aero set up effects.
Obviously they use computers. My point is that Newley, (claims at least) to do his design work on paper.
Which, is not that surprising. If you're good enough to have a draughtman digitize your designs for you, you're free to draw what you want on a five by four foot surface and not fiddle with a GUI and a 30?, 40? inch screen.
Overnight they print you the latest drawing on the plotter and you're back to you doing you. Id live to have a secretary print me my work and then digitize it in the evening.
What you're describing is not how engineering is done.
There's no overnight printing of the drawings.
The 3D CAD models are designed and available in real time, they are used in various CFD and FEA models. The only time drawings are printed out are dimensioned production drawings sent to manufacture the parts.
There are no digital draftsmen, it's sort of semantics but design engineers are working directly with parametric 3D models, they can produce 2D drawings from the models.
As a senior engineer Newey is likely reviewing Wind tunnel data, CAD designs of concepts, CFD/FEA Data, laptime sim results, and collaborating "over the shoulder" of less senior engineers responsible for specific aerodynamic packages, who then feed that info in collaboration with design engineers and surface modelers to update the CAD models.
Im sure the workflow is complicated, just like you said. Im sure lots of Console licenses and Ansys licenses are being used.
And yet here's Newey drawing on a piece of paper. And he hardly looks like a young chap in the 80s.
Who knows, maybe this photo was for the cameras. Maybe he lies that he draws his cars to throw off the competition. But, for what it's worth
he claims in interviews that he draws his cars in pencil.
Every time the SR-71 pops up, it's brings back a memory of seeing it do a flyby at Dulles Airport. IIRC it was supposed to be the last flight as the program was ending. This is probably 1989. I didn't know about it until the day of the event so I didn't have my camera with me.
I think my entire engineering department and a bunch from the production floor (about 15-20 of us) went over to the airport to see the bird. Back then you could drive up to and park at the upper departure level. So there we are, waiting... Someone brought a portable scanner along and was listening to air traffic control, so we knew when it would pass over.
First thing we heard was the sonic boom as it passed over (I believe this flight set the west coast to east coast speed record.) After some interval of minutes we heard which direction it would be coming from. All other landing and take off traffic was suspended while the bird circled the airport. Then turned a made a low level (like about the height of the tower) really slow. We got a really good look at it. He hit the afterburners, and took off. I've never seen anything move that fast. It practically disappeared, like something out of a movie jumping into hyperspace. Absolutely incredible, no matter how much I read about the SR-71 and the program, I'm just in awe of the designers and engineers that made it happen.
Amazing aircraft. Never had the pleasure of seeing it in motion but I paid a special visit to see the one at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford outside London. Bloody brilliant, and I even broke the rules to touch it briefly with my hand to feel what it was like.
It kinda looks, to my eyes at least, like it has a matte finish in photos, so my thinking would be that it would have perhaps an almost shark skin roughness or something? Though you'd imagine surely not given the bit of extra drag when factored over the whole airframe...maybe?
But then again, at those speeds I wonder if there would be a difference or if boundary layer effects take over or something of that nature.
Disclaimer: am obviously not an aerospace engineer :)
Once you've finished re-reading, here's the reverse version:
> There were a lot of things we couldn't do in a Cessna 172, but we were some of the slowest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the 172. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Mundane, maybe. Even boring at times. But there was one day in our Cessna experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be some of the slowest guys out there, at least for a moment.
> It occurred when my CFI and I were flying a training flight. We needed 40 hours in the plane to complete my training and attain PPL status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the 40 hour mark. We had made the turn back towards our home airport in a radius of a mile or two and the plane was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the left seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because I would soon be flying as a true pilot, but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Bumbling across the mountains 3,500 feet below us, I could only see about 8 miles across the ground. I was, finally, after many humbling months of training and study, ahead of the plane.
> I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for my CFI in the right seat. There he was, with nothing to do except watch me and monitor two different radios. This wasn't really good practice for him at all. He'd been doing it for years. It had been difficult for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my this part of my flying career, I could handle it on my own. But it was part of the division of duties on this flight and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. My CFI was so good at many things, but he couldn't match my expertise at sounding awkward on the radios, a skill that had been roughly sharpened with years of listening to LiveATC.com where the slightest radio miscue was a daily occurrence. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.
> Just to get a sense of what my CFI had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Denver Center, not far below us, controlling daily traffic in our sector. While they had us on their scope (for a good while, I might add), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to climb into their airspace. We listened as the shaky voice of a lone SR-71 pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: "Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground." Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the "Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
> Just moments after the SR-71's inquiry, an F-18 piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. "Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground." Boy, I thought, the F-18 really must think he is dazzling his SR-71 brethren. Then out of the blue, a Twin Beech pilot out of an airport outside of Denver came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Twin Beech driver because he sounded very cool on the radios. "Center, Beechcraft 173-Delta-Charlie ground speed check". Before Center could reply, I'm thinking to myself, hey, that Beech probably has a ground speed indicator in that multi-thousand-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol' Delta-Charlie here is making sure that every military jock from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He's the slowest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new bug-smasher. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: "173-Delta-Charlie, Center, we have you at 90 knots on the ground." And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that my CFI was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done - in mere hours we'll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Beechcraft must die, and die now. I thought about all of my training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
> Somewhere, half a mile above Colorado, there was a pilot screaming inside his head. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the right seat. That was the very moment that I knew my CFI and I had become lifelong friends. Very professionally, and with no emotion, my CFI spoke: "Denver Center, Cessna 56-November-Sierra, can you give us a ground speed check?" There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. "Cessna 56-November-Sierra, I show you at 56 knots, across the ground."
> I think it was the six knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that my CFI and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most CFI-like voice: "Ah, Center, much thanks, we're showing closer to 52 on the money."
> For a moment my CFI was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when Denver came back with, "Roger that November-Sierra, your E6B is probably more accurate than our state-of-the-art radar. You boys have a good one." It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable stroll across the west, the Navy had been owned, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Slow, and more importantly, my CFI and I had crossed the threshold of being BFFs. A fine day's work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to our home airport.
> For just one day, it truly was fun being the slowest guys out there.
To be fair you can do that in a 172 as well (but it's obviously not negative ground speed). My CFI took me up on a particularly windy day so we could fly 3kts backwards.
On the Blackbird site, there's a really good factual story delivered after someone asked about the slowest they'd ever flown the plane. That tale is a good read:
Heh there's a speed check story in this article too with different numbers: For the F-18 Dusty 52 it's 525 vs 620 knots and for the blackbird it's 1742 vs 1842.
He sells his books anytime he gives a talk. I got an autographed copy ~5 years ago when he was a speaker at the museum of flight in Seattle during the seafair airshow.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Do you think the Libyan intelligence service gets to bomb dance clubs and then cry sovereignty when someone bombs some military targets in Libya? I don't know if you are ignorant of the situation or if you truly believe a country cannot retaliate against an attack against their citizens and allies. (This story and the bombing campaigned being photographed by the SR71 was a direct response to the West Berlin discotheque bombing in 1986).
>The entire world is truly their own backyard!
Yes..? If you are a state actor like Libya and you attack other nations civilians to cause terror then they have the right to attack you back. The US bombing Gaddafi's compounds and some other military targets in Libya was 100% justified. To act like a country can't retaliate in such a situation is honestly childish.
So there would be absolutely no problem if afghans or cubans bombed the US, right? Is it just the US that is allowed to basically do whatever it wants to a country based on whatever conclusion their spook agencies come up with?
Plus, as the other comment says there has been no proof that libya was involved. Going by a "hunch" or "secret info from our intelligence agencies" isn't evidence either. You should probably read up on the events, it was super controversial at the time so claiming it was just a cut and dry self-defense move from the US is laughable.
Well, nobody presented evidence that Libya was behind the La Belle bombing.
If you think that some shady arm of US intelligence isn't capable of such a heinous false flag operation, I urge you to read more history. Now I'm not saying it was one, I'm saying we have no idea who was behind it.
Because real life isn't a TV show. That isn't how national security agencies work. They don't dump raw intelligence to the public. The US knew it was Libya obviously, and the data released since then has proved that. Hell even the Stasi & the soviets knew it was Libya.
Again this isn't a TV show. No country needs permission to react to an attack against them by another state like Libya.
Oh, so your advice is to blindly trust whatever they shovel into the public's mouths ?
I totally trust US three letter organisations, and cannot see what could possibly go wrong as they have never shown signs of incompetence and malice in the past.
The fact that the stasi thought it was the Libyans could very well mean that it was a very successful false flag operation. This is the problem with the intelligence apparatus. It is war against the truth.
>Oh, so your advice is to blindly trust whatever they shovel into the public's mouths ?
Are you being serious? By this time in history Libya had already established a history for terror attacks and targeting civilians. So yeah I wouldn't have any issue believing it.
Just like when the UK blamed Russia for poising people Salisbury with chemical weapons. I believed them because they had intelligence about it & Russia has a history with this type of attack. Just like Libya already had a proven history of terror attacks in the 80s.
It is beyond silly to think a false flag bombing (injuring 250+ friendly nationals) is more likely than LIBYA, a know rouge state and user of terrorism, bombing a civilian dance club.
You and others are more than happy to bury your heads in the sand and pretend like the world is a TV show where countries post all their intelligence to twitter or in the paper lol.
Again I'm not sure why you're ignoring this but it was only the US that came up with that conclusion, and super quickly too. The other european intelligence agencies, including the German one, didn't agree with the libyan connection. But I'm sure the US knows more, and more quickly than everyone else in Europe (which at the time, had a very strong intelligence apparatus since each country was more independent than it is now).
It's especially convenient that the US did not wait for the results of any investigation before launching an attack. This is just pure american chauvinism, where the US can do no wrong as long as we just believe that their intelligence agencies are always right. I guess it works for americans but to the rest of the world, it just doesn't cut it.
I guess we should just trust when the Chinese or Russian agencies come up with their conclusions too, then.
And yes, the US is a democracy and russia/china aren't. But that doesn't seem to have made the US any more trust worthy when it comes to not being prone to baseless war mongering. And the US population seem to be pretty excited to vote over and over again for (or at least, it used to be) war hawks or even outright war criminals. Bush was re-elected in 2004 after outright lying about an incredibly destructive war, so it seems like democracy isn't an argument for trusting the US more on these matters. I guess Americans and westerners in general (mostly) don't live with the consequences of those wars so it's very easy to handwave demands of actual proof by saying that life isn't a movie, or that it was all done with good faith(tm).
But for muslims and the MENA region in general, those arguments just don't resonate well with us at all.
The SR-71s were over Libya in 1986 because the Libyan secret service detonated a bomb in a Berlin nightclub, killing 3 and wounding hundreds, ten days prior.
Ah yes, the US said so. You should probably look into the actual investigations and events before telling other people to stop. Almost no european country agrees with the conclusion of the US government (that bombed libya in a matter of days, before any investigation started to begin with).
A government that was back then almost frothing at the mouth at any occasion to blame everything on the libyans, to a comical degree. Which was well known, and also the reason why most european countries did not agree with the intervention that we are discussing
I mean, Germany said so too and the bombing happened in their country. They even convinced other European countries to extradite the suspects who were later convicted
The days of America violating sovereign airspace are drawing to a close, thankfully.
“The United States-initiated aerial bombing of targets inside the borders of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah which took place on April 15, 1986, was met with substantial and immediate criticism by the world community. The positive reaction from the U.S. congress and the American public was not shared by much of the world. Arab nations denounced the American action, as did the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In meetings of the UN Security Council, countries denouncing the raid outnumbered those which supported it.
Good article: “American Bombing of Libya: An International
Legal Analysis” (1987)
Both international law (the US has no UN mandate) and national/domestic Syrian law.
“End America’s Illegal Occupation of Syria Now: Our presence there is a violation of domestic and international law that’s made a horrible civil war even worse.”
Ah yes, because surely when the US stops patrolling the seas and skies of this planet, nobody else will try. We will finally have our peaceful utopia once that pesky United States is out of the way!
There is a huge difference between patrolling international tradeways or helping nato allies, and invading or violating foreign countries on a whim with absolutely 0 consequences.
Well for one thing the US genuinely seems to be a lot less imperialistic these days. I mean, not militarily at least, I'm sure they are still involved in all kinds of meddling but with less military muscle flexing. It started with Trump but Biden seem to thankfully have kept the same less-interventionist policy. So I guess they have found a way to not do the other stuff, thankfully.
I guess it could just be a return back to the mean from the absolutely, unashamed military imperialism of the 1980s- early 2010s.
There is no international law (or agreement) defining the vertical boundary of a nation’s sovereign territory/airspace, but I guarantee no Libyans were up at 80,000'.
> My first encounter with the SR-71 came when I was 10 years old in the form of molded black plastic in a Revell kit.
> Twenty-nine years later, I stood awe-struck in a Beale Air Force Base hangar, staring at the very real SR-71 before me.
> In 1962, the first Blackbird successfully flew, and in 1966, the same year I graduated from high school, the Air Force began flying operational SR-71 missions.
> I came to the program in 1983
So the author was born in 1944 if they were 39 (29+ 10) in 1983.
1966 then puts them graduating at 22 (was high school longer back then? I wouldn’t have thought so and he’s supposed to have a stellar record and 22 feels a little old for joining the military) and playing with the SR-71 model in 1952 before it was even conceived in 1960.
A bunch of this doesn't make much sense to me either, the SR-71 was revealed to the public in 1966. That would make him born in 1956. He would be 30 in 1986, which makes sense, but the the 29 years later part doesn't sound right.
I built an SR-71 kit as a kid. But I was born in 1977. I wish I still had it. I put a ton of work into it.
The model manufacturers did scoop the reveals at some points, but they were never that accurate. I had an "F-19 Stealth Fighter" kit I built as well. It had significant differences from the F-117 when that became public.
I built an SR-71 model rocket. It was Estes, not Revell, and looked like this [0]. It was very difficult to build compared to other models, because it had three cylinders with webbing for the fuselage and engines. I remember being disappointed that the two outer cylinders were not designed to take individual model rocket engines. There was only one in the center. I guess it would have been too hard to ignite them synchronously.
When I launched it (vertically of course), the plane seemed to hover forever on the launchpad before finally overcoming gravity and taking off. It did not achieve Mach 3.5 or anything significant for a rocket of its size. When it reached the ejection stage, it popped off the front cabin "nosecone", looking very ungainly as it fluttered to the ground on a parachute.
Thanks for posting this. I built that same kit back when it was new, but at the time it was just some estes rocket to me -- I just now realized it was an SR-71.
My thinking is high school graduation could be as early as 16 but more likely 17 or 18, so 1966 - 18 = 1948 (or 49 or 50). 1983 would be 35, though by the author's own math he'd be 39. I think its probably safe to discount "10 years old" memory for the Revell kit; I can't seem to find when the kit began production (because the Internet is about buying things) - but in order for high school graduation to be at age 18 then the kit would have to be produced and sold in 1958 which seems unlikely (or 1960 if graduating at age 16).
I’m not familiar with this space. Is a Revell kit for a top secret plane that hadn’t even been designed something that happened/happens commonly?
The author says the motivating incident was the U2 shoot down in 1960 which was the motivating incident for the engineer to start designing it. How would the author be playing with it then?
Misdirect about the kid part to enhance the story? Maybe they had the kit later in life and retrofitted it into a “destiny” theme?
Fastest official is Mach 3.43. I would note that that isn't likely the full story. The US Gov has famously been deceptive about the plane, both overselling or underselling its abilities. (Notably, I do not believe that the US Government ever 'officially' admitted to overflying the USSR.)
It is very possible that for a short period of time, they sustained over mach 3.5 or 3.6, what affect that would have/had on the airframe and engines is unknown.
An interesting story is that once, during the cold war, a Mig-25 was supposedly tracked over Israel at over Mach 3.2 in what is best described as "GTFO" mode. It basically was an attempt to do what the US was doing with the SR-71s. At that speed, the engines are assumed to have been scraped after each flight.
One could make assumptions that the ram-jet elements of an SR-71's J-58s could allow for a few minutes, in the right airframe, with a lucky bin of build quality and weather, far beyond that.
I would also note that this story buries the lede. The title states mach 3.5 but the pilot implies numbers beyond. I'm not sure how factual it is or if it is dramatized, but the pilot absolutely is who they say they are and wrote a book about it.
> At that speed, the engines are assumed to have been scraped after each flight.
> One could make assumptions that the ram-jet elements of an SR-71's J-58s could allow for a few minutes...far beyond that
I would expect the SR-71 to stay at speed longer and for the engines to be capable of higher power (assuming the airframe and intake can handle it). US engines were generally higher quality, while Soviet engines were expected to be replaced very quickly relatively. However, this was a conscious decision on the part of the USSR: instead of making expensive engines with good maintainability in the field, they chose to make cheap engines that were easy to replace. As a result, while a MiG-25 may have only been able to maintain Mach 3 for a few minutes and ruin the engine in the process, they built 1,186 of them, with probably >5,000 Mach 3 capable engines.
Not particularly relevant, but always interesting to discuss how different people think
The SR71 engines are the only ones ever designed to run continuously in after burner. Also in ramjet mode, going faster increased the efficiency as the bow shock swept back and into the engine inlets, providing pre-compressed air.
I believe it's the upper limit to the SR-71's engine style based on air intake.
If you watched Top Gun: Maverick since it came out they (spoiler) had him flying a prototype plane called the Darkstar to hit Mach 10 in order to maintain a military contract. During the flight, he switches engines to SCRAM Jet once he reaches Mach 3.5 because in order for those types of engines to have enough air intake to function, you already have to be traveling at that speed.
This was such an innovation that China redirected a satellite to find the plane because they thought it was real.
If you've never read Skunk Works by Ben Rich, I highly recommend it. Lots of SR-71 stories along with U-2, F-117 too.
Amateurs can track satellites with telescopes. Inferring intent from a course change is pretty reasonable if it makes a direct overpass, with not much else of interest on the same track. That's not the crazy part of the story.
I remember my manager was obsessed with the plane and it's name. It sounded so cool. But then I told him what bird it really is (Koltrast in Swedish) and he seemed so disappointed. He probably thought it was a black Eagle or something.
Here the Blackbird is mostly known för its beautiful although melancholic song. And it is also the national bird of Sweden.
If anyone has a vague interest in this airplane - I would highly reccommend seeing it in the flesh, it is probably the most incredible piece of machinery I have seen. I have seen two different ones, one in the Seattle flight museum, and another in a flight museum in Riverside, CA.
legend is that president johnson got it confused in a press conference and called it the sr-71 so instead of correcting him they just changed the name.
"skunk works" is a great read. i'm almost done with "area 51" by annie jacobsen and it's quite the interesting read as well, though it does get dry at times. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15839422W/Area_51
The correct part of the legend is that the speech he was reading off of said SR-71, because someone thought it sounded better, and getting it spoken by the President was easier than doing it the "Right" way.
My grandfather was an OG at the Skunk Works from the time where it was first established. He started at the Burbank plant and followed to Palmdale. He worked on a lot of those legendary projects and still has a ton of his old illustrations. This was a question of mine too - why was there so much innovation at such breakneck speed and why have things changed? His feeling is that it was a cultural one. In the early days of the Skunk Works, people felt and operated like it was the most secretive and important element of their lives and had a tremendous amount of pride for their work. He said that over time it began to operate less and less like a sidecar "elite unit" of engineering etc... and started to get integrated more into the rest of Lockheed. Then the culture began to fell apart because the bar was not as high.
I know you're being glib but I assume the reason we didn't do any more Blackbirds is because normal satellite imagery got good enough that it didn't make as much sense to keep building these crazy things.
Does anyone remember that satellite photo Trump leaked of that iranian missile silo?
I'm just guessing that if they showed it to Trump unprompted in a briefing, it's unlikely that this is max zoom. And it's already crazy clear.
And the article mentions:
"Hanham also says that the European company Airbus has been experimenting with drones that fly so high, they are technically outside the atmosphere and thus operating outside national boundaries. But she says she doesn't know whether the U.S. has such a system."
So I think we just got a bit better at radar deflection and flying really high to where the Blackbird doesn't make sense anymore.
> I know you're being glib but I assume the reason we didn't do any more Blackbirds is because normal satellite imagery got good enough that it didn't make as much sense to keep building these crazy things.
Most likely because of cost and missile technology catching up. After all, the U2 is still in active service, so the satellites aren't a perfect replacement.
To be fair, we still fly recon missions with the U-2. Spy planes haven't entirely gone the way of the dodo, just the envelope-pushing madness that was the SR-71.
Aerospace computers don't get any respect. The SR-71's DAFICS (Digital Automatic Flight and Inlet Control System) is a digital computer system with triple-redundancy. I bet your computer doesn't have that :-)
Ironically, the plane was dripping, much like the misshapen model had assembled in my youth. Fuel was seeping through the joints, raining down on the hangar floor. At Mach 3, the plane would expand several inches because of the severe temperature, which could heat the leading edge of the wing to 1,100 degrees. To prevent cracking, expansion joints had been built into the plane. Sealant resembling rubber glue covered the seams, but when the plane was subsonic, fuel would leak through the joints.
In the "Skunk Works" book they explain that you could throw a lit cigarette directly into a puddle of fuel and it would not ignite, due to the very high temps needed.
Yes but for a different reason - car gas because it's the vapors which ignite, so if you toss a cigarette on a fresh puddle of car gas you're going to have a very bad day. For planes it's due to the much higher temperatures required, the worst thing you'll do tossing a cigarette into a fresh puddle of jet fuel is burn your finger.
Not as much as you'd think - by design, JP7 has a low vapor pressure and doesn't ignite easily. To start the engines in the SR71, they used the very pyrophoric triethylborane (spontaneously combusts at -20C).
Fun fact the SR71 was capable of in air refueling but it still required pyrophoric triethylborane to start afterburners which couldn't be resupplied in air. So total mission time was limited by that and not fuel.
Yes. But also the fuel used was also very difficult to light (consequence of it's design requirements), so at least as a fire hazard, it was probably relatively well controlled.
Uh health risks... shrug. The pilot is wearing most of a space suit. Who knows whats up with the ground crew though.
I guess it was pretty incredible watching a missile fly down an air vent, pretty unbelievable, but couldn’t we feasibly use that same technology to shoot food to hungry people? You know what I mean? Fly over the Ethiopia: “There’s a guy that needs a banana!”
It's truly incredible that the A12/SR-71 aircraft was designed without the benefit of modern computing. In Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works" I recall there a bit about a comment that somebody once made regarding Kelly Johnson, something like "That Swede can see air". Truly a compliment to Johnson's almost uncanny ability to design aircraft for a specification. The U2 was another example of such ability.