Posted on 07/29/2016 8:16:36 AM PDT by DFG
For 40 years it has been the fastest plane ever built, and now the crew who flew the record-breaking, speed-shattering mission have been reunited with the aircraft they once commanded, and climbed back into the cockpit. It was 1976 when U.S. Air Force pilot Maj. Gen. Eldon 'Al' Joersz and Lt. Col. George 'GT' Morgan flew a jet faster than a speeding bullet. They flew faster than anyone had done before, or since. On July 28, 1976, the two men flew a SR-71 Blackbird spy plane for more than a thousand kilometers at 2,193 miles per hour, covering one mile every 1.64 seconds, a record that still stands today.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
the most amazing thing about this is, its 60 tech!! imagine what they could do now if they still made this kind of stuff...
Saw one in upstate NY during the time of the Egypt/Israeli thing, as I recall.
Small and low footprint but massive purple flames taking off.
I read that the plane changes shape a little as it heats up from the friction of flying so fast. As a result the pilots never determined how fast it could actually go.
Have you never seen one up close? They’re HUGE! for a 2-seat aircraft.
Nice!
Posted here before I’m sure, but worth reading again.
http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041
Imagine all the stuff we don’t know about ...
Cannot build it now. The PEOPLE who hand-crafted them in the 50’s and 60’s no longer exist.
>>the most amazing thing about this is, its 60 tech!! imagine what they could do now if they still made this kind of stuff...<<
It looks like they pushed technology to the border of laws of physics.
I am no longer in the DC area often, but whenever I am the Air and Space museum is a must see.
The first time I was close to it, back in 1990 it seemed larger than I had imagined it from photos
>>Cannot build it now. The PEOPLE who hand-crafted them in the 50’s and 60’s no longer exist.<<
We don’t possess the will and gumption we did back then. If you look at the great birds, many still in service, they went from draft to production in 4 or 5 years, including the SR 71.
Today it takes 20 years to come close and then we either ruin it (F 35) or drop it (F 22).
Everything is incrementalism and loaded down with dead weight.
Alas, the money to have done so was long ago been diverted to Dem liberal social programs.
Designed with a slide-rule with Pencil and paper. Amazing design and an amazing aircraft.
I was honored to be a member of the Programming team that supported the SR-71 mission for 4 years in the late 80's.
>>I read that the plane changes shape a little as it heats up from the friction of flying so fast. As a result the pilots never determined how fast it could actually go.
It doesn’t change shape. But the skin panels do expand due to heating so it is built to permit that expansion between joints so that it doesn’t warp and change shape.
It goes a bit faster than that. I had a teacher, who is a retired air traffic controller, that clocked the thing doing 3500 knots. That’s about Mach 5.2.
We have high resolution, LEO satellites that are preferable.
Fuel leaks from the plane like a sieve when it is sitting on the ground and the panels do not completely fit together, allowing them to expand when they heat up in flight.
The SR-71 must be refueled immediately after take off to have enough to continue on with its mission.
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