And human brains.
For the B-52 they were using E-size stone tablets! Try hanging a few of them on the rack?
I suspect it should be collapse not cavitate? Cavitation will decrease with an increase of pressure, I know nothing of the fuel system.
I got a chance to view the SR-71 Blackbird at the Abbottsford BC (Canada) airshow years ago. I talked to the pilot, an Air Force major. He said the plane had no internal engine starter. They wheeled out a trailer to fire it up. It contained a Buick V-8 with a vertical spline to insert into the engines from below. The V-8 spun up the engines on the ramp.
The airplane was made out of titanium as standard aircraft aluminum would melt from its high-speed friction. When the plane was first built, the Soviet Union was the only source of titanium. The U.S. government secretly created fake civilian corporations to buy the material from the Soviets without divulging its purpose.
Over its entire service life, more than 4,000 missiles were launched to shoot down the Blackbird but none were successful. At full speed, the plane was faster than the muzzle velocity of a 30.06 bullet. At high speed, the aircraft could not do a U-turn within the borders of the state of Ohio.
Because of friction, the plane would literally swell in size in high-speed flight. Fuel would leak like crazy from its fuel tanks until the speed-produced friction expanded the fuel tanks which then sealed themselves.
The airplane was way too hot to touch upon landing. Ground crewmen had to wear gloves.
The aircraft still holds many speed records to this day.
FWIW I had a chance to work on an SR-71 while a DOD contractor at Otis AFB on Cape Cod, MA in 1972.
They had landed there due to an avionics problem and I was the only one with a high enough clearance in the AV shop. And even I didn’t know what they needed me for until I got out to the far end of a remote strip and there it sat. A big, black, hulking plane bathed in light from the portable light towers and reeking of fuel. And I knew instantly what it was.
Turns out that the piece of gear that was having the problem was fairly standard and I was able to repair it after a trip back to the shop.
When the AF Colonel and the two armed MP’s dropped me off back at the shop, the Colonel looked at me and said very seriously, “We were never here and you didn’t see anything.”
I said, “See what?” He just smiled, nodded, and drove off.
Fast Forward to 2010, and my wife and I were in San Francisco getting ready to take a Duck boat tour and the driver noticed the SR-71 T-shirt I was wearing, and asked why I was wearing it.
When I said I had had a chance to work on one way back when, he asked me a few questions about it, and I could tell he was kind of testing me to see if I was telling the truth.
Having answered to his satisfaction, I guess, he told me he had been a crew chief on one, so we started swapping stories.
But the most interesting thing he told me was that the SR-71 didn’t really have a known top speed. Every time the Russians would set a new record, they would just go out and open the throttles a little bit more, just enough to set a new record.
But the word was the engines would just run faster and faster until they came apart. But I guess that was never tested.
I became acquainted with a couple of SR-71 pilots; one of them gave me a tour of the facility at Beale AFB where pilots are prepared for a mission. Ordinary looking pilots with extraordinary skills.
That ramjet high-mach operation is being evaluated for some new hypersonic engine applications.
That engine alone is an endless marvel for when it was designed.
Fairly sure the “continuous afterburner” operation was really psuedo-ramjet operation, not an afterburner mode as used in regular turbojets.
That had to be an 11 on the scale of excitement. 10 hours on afterburner. Zooks.
The trick is the SR71 at speed is effective power by ram jet... I’ve heard Kelly Johnson used to said it was his Nacelles design not the j58 that power the SR71 at MACH 3
Here is an interesting page on the SR-71. We used to refuel those things out of Beale AFB.
http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html