Posted on 03/10/2015 4:49:57 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
In 1976 they smashed the world aviation speed record by blasting across the Western United States in America's super spy plane, the Lockheed SR-71.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
My wife says she had a poster of the SR-71 in her bedroom when she was a child.
An absolutely beautiful and elegant airplane! It was easy to fall in love with it! :-)
The original name was RS-71 but LBJ mispronounced it at and the upper ranks were afraid to correct him and so it became the SR-71.
“No, but he wing-walked one.”
LOL! Yup, the first liar doesn’t stand a chance.
SR-71 was the first aircraft designed to take into account the Lorentz contraction (relativity). It leaks fuel like a sieve on the ground, but as it picks up speed the titanium fuselage actually shrinks and the aerodynamics consider the shrinkage.
Refuels after it gets up in altitude, then continues its flight plan at the behest of the pilot.
Whatever happened to the classified 20-yr old "Aurora?"
My guess is that it was designed using a slide rule!
The Skunk Works in Palmdale has a Gift Shoppe (honest!). I ordered some knickknacks from there -- refrigerator magnets, coffee mug, license plate frame, etc.
The box they sent the stuff in was a standard USPO mailing box sealed with the cheeriest Smiley Face tape and cushioned inside with the local newspaper. There was also a big Smiley Face drawn on the enclosed receipt.
They're a cheery bunch there at Black Ops Central.
“SR-71 was the first aircraft designed to take into account the Lorentz contraction (relativity). It leaks fuel like a sieve on the ground, but as it picks up speed the titanium fuselage actually shrinks and the aerodynamics consider the shrinkage.”
Not Lorentz contraction (lol) but just plain old heating. As the airframe heated up from aerodynamic friction it sealed. Plenty of heating happens at Mach 3.
Almost as cheery as the Gettysburg Gift Shop!
Which, I must say, is really weird.
I saw an F-14 pull one of those at an airshow.
Awesome how quick that thing was gone.
My dad was a USAF officer and liked to tell a story where two SR-71 pilots took off from Beale AFB in California, refueled over the East Coast, and continued on to touch down at a base in England long after sunset.
Some big shot asked the SR71 crew if they’d like to join him for dinner at the officers club and they said “We just had breakfast.”
I’m sure it’s some USAF pop culture story retold a million times, but there must have been some element of truth in its origins.
Lorentz contraction? SR-71??
Seriously???
Try “thermal expansion” ...
Yes exactly. The skin is made of Waspaloy and the leading edges heat up to around 3000 degrees.
My best SR-71 Story.
I was a Crew Chief on A-10’s from ’85 to ’88 at RAF Bentwaters, England.
One day we were towing a plane to the “Wash Rack”, which as on the other side of the runway, and I was the “Brake Rider” sitting in the cockpit of the A-10 as it was being towed. As we approached the runway, I radioed the tower and requested permission to cross the active runway. Their reply included the phrase, “Proceed without delay.”
As we moved across the runway, I looked to the right and saw a black speck in the sky.
Now, if you know US cold war era aircraft, you know that the A-10 cockpit had probably the best all around visibility of anything in the inventory at the time.
JUST as we cleared the runway, a Blackbird zooms not more than 100 feet or so over the runway right behind me, gets about half way down its length, lights the burners, points it’s nose to the sky and is gone. And I had an absolutely perfect unobstructed close up view of the entire pass.
IT. WAS. AWESOME.
“The original name was RS-71 but LBJ mispronounced it at and the upper ranks were afraid to correct him and so it became the SR-71.”
The Blackbird was originally conceived as a fighter, the YF-12, but when it became clear that its speed made short, quick turns impossible, it became the SR-71, perhaps RS-71 during an interim period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3ao5SCedIk
The Mighty J58 - The SR-71’s Secret Powerhouse
It’s been called “black magic”: an engine that can push a plane from 0 to Mach 3.2 without breaking a sweat. Here’s how it works.
My mistake. Not Waspaloy but a Titanium frame. The Waspaloy was used in the aft section of the engine.
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