[Red Badger]

AVIATION PING!....................

[Trumpisourlastchance]

America has $180 Trillion in debt & liabilities and is collapsing. It’s over. Enjoy the plane.

[Celtic Conservative]

If they say it could soon take flight it actually means it’s been flying for 5 years.

CC

[Smittie]

I suspect that a replacement platform has already been in operation. I doubt they would retire The SR-71 without something to take its’ place.

[Seaplaner]

As an Airman in the '60s, I was a technician on some of the SR-71 electronic systems. One of the 4 or 5 greatest aircraft (there is much discussion about the top few airplanes) in history, possibly only second to the original Wright Flyer.

As such, I'm pretty excited about the potential SR-72, and I do hope it's approved and in production ASAP. We need it.

That said, I do wish it were a manned A/C.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[odawg]

“...the U.S. Air Force is already wrapped up in several expensive projects, all straining the U.S. defense budget. This could signal problems for the SR-72 regarding whether the additional cost of production and maintenance for a new fleet of advanced aircraft is feasible.”

It is so much better to burn billions of dollars in the fruitless Ukraine war than to protect the future of the United States.

[Sirius Lee]

Wham bam thank you ram jet?

[PIF]

The SR-71 out ran the 800 missiles fired at it during its career.

[CodeJockey]

The unmanned aircraft... So this is a drone.

Currently most all late model commercial airliners could be drones. But like most, I don’t believe the average Joe would want to board a plane without a pilot in the cockpit.

Someday however, this might happen.

[rlmorel]

Thought you all might find this link educational and enjoyable, especially if you are into aerospace engineering and aviation:

LINK: How the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Works

The whole video is astonishingly well done and entertaining to boot, but the link above takes you to a specific point in the video where they discuss the flight controls, particularly...they go through all the major sub-systems, and in this example of engineering below, largely done with the human mind and slide rulers, they discuss "The Mixer":

"The Mixer"

The "Mixer" is, to me, a ridiculously elegant device to handle flight control in a new way that had never been done before that time (that I know of). All the movable flight surfaces at the tailing edge of the body had to move in a coordinated way to provide pitch, roll, and blends of both when a combination of pitch and roll are needed.

Nowadays, it wouldn't be very complicated, right? You have a computer that would provide input to the controls to make an unflyable plane...flyable by electronically adjusting the flight controls to . But back then, they did it mechanically, linked with...cables to hydraulic boosters. It is brilliant. And development was begun in 1958!!!!

It isn't that I don't think engineers can do this kind of thing today, they obviously could, I believe. But I think it would be harder for them to conceive of.

By the way, for you Gear Heads, there is a great section on how they started up the plane using two unmuffled, high-power V-8 engines!

[wastedyears]

I guess it’s not so secretive now.

[BerryDingle]

SR-72 accidentally lands perfectly undamaged due to a “malfunction” in Iran in 3.....2.......1....