World's fastest jet crew are reunited with the supersonic SR-71 Blackbird

UK Daily Mail ^ | 07/29/2016 | James Gordon

[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.

[Charles Martel]

An SR-71 was sent up at an appropriate time to sync with the passing shuttle. The SR-71 rolled inverted and photographed the passing shuttle.

Wow. I hadn't really considered that possibility, but that must be a big part of why NASA decided to keep a few SR-71s flying into the 1990s.

[PLMerite]

Yes, I figured something like that. I mentioned it because I think an SR-71 doing 3500kts would probably be doing it at 80,000+ feet. :)

[Jack Hydrazine]

At least 80,000+ feet. More likely closer to 100 or 120 thousand.

[Jack Hydrazine]

“The engines were huge.”

No they were not.

Those engines were YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jack Hydrazine]

The late Ben Rich, the second head of Lockheed Skunkworks after Kelly Johnson, has been quoted to say three things right before his death in May of 1995.

1 : “Inside the Skunk Works we were a small, intensely cohesive group consisting of about fifty veteran engineers and designers and a hundred or so expert machinists and shop workers. Our forte was building technologically advanced airplanes of small number and of high class for highly secret missions.”

2 : “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.”

3 : “We now have the technology to take ET home. No, it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations. We know what it is. We now have the capability to travel to the stars. First, you have to understand that we will not get to the stars using chemical propulsion. Second, we have to devise a new propulsion technology. What we have to do is find out where Einstein went wrong.”

We Now Have the Technology to Take ET Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZZekWMiUQ

[cyn]

thanks for posting; I’m wishing I’d asked more questions of that test-pilot relative.

[cyn]

// But my desire to see the sky overruled my caution, I dimmed the lighting again. To my amazement, I saw a bright light outside my window. As my eyes adjusted to the view, I realized that the brilliance was the broad expanse of the Milky Way, now a gleaming stripe across the sky. Where dark spaces in the sky had usually existed, there were now dense clusters of sparkling stars. Shooting stars flashed across the canvas every few seconds. It was like a fireworks display with no sound. //

seeing the unseen

[Despot of the Delta]

The J58’s could give more power than the air frame could handle

[superfries]

good old classical hand calculations. No nastran and patran used in that effort.

[Ezekiel]

the broad expanse of the Milky Way, now a gleaming stripe across the sky.

>>>In Germany the modern Milch Strasse is the translation of our best-known title; while it has long been, and popularly is even now, Jakobs Strasse and Jakobs Weg, Jacob's Road; as the Belt of Orion is his Staff lying alongside the road. And it has been still further associated with that patriarch as his Ladder.<<<

http://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/milky_way.html

[American Quilter]

I was at Beale in the 80s, too, and used to love to watch the SR (aka "the sled") take off. Its pilots were considered the elite, which really griped the U-2 pilots also stationed there. The sled was very touchy, and the only-half-humorous joke used to be that the maintenance crews always prepared two sleds for every mission, because one would certainly break down and the other one probably would, too. It burned so much fuel that it had to be refueled after takeoff, again when it reached the mission area, again when it left the mission area, and again before it arrived back at base. Everything you've heard about its speed was true; when it flew from RAF Mildenhall in England back to its home base at Beale (in CA), the pilots would say it arrived before it left.

The U-2 pilots, meanwhile, flew their trusty, reliable planes on 9-hour missions (without refueling) at 60,000 feet without breakdowns and without fanfare. If you really wanted to enrage a U-2 pilot, you could ask him if he was hoping to upgrade to an SR-71.