The Space Shuttle was faster than a SR-71, but I think the SR-71 is far cooler. The speed in this story is around Mach 2. The Blackbird is supposed to be capable of Mach 3+.
the space shuttle is, um . . . well, it’s in orbit . . . ahhhh, and there are these rocket thingies . . .
nah. never mind
The two most amazing things about the SR71 to me are
1) when it was designed (1958-59) and built (early 60's) and
2) where the government sourced the titanium (USSR)
1900 knots ground speed. At 80kft, Mach 1 is ~580 knots, and a strong westerly tailwind in the northern hemisphere is pretty rare.... especially a 600kt tailwind ;)
FWIW, I worked as historian on the X-30, which was being designed to go Mach 25. Since we had no wind tunnels capable of testing even a model at that speed, the aircraft was to be the test instrument itself.
At General Dynamics they put me (NOT a pilot) in the sim.
I have the distinction of crashing the Aerospace Plane 3 times at only 10,000 mph in less than five minutes.
“The Space Shuttle was faster than a SR-71,”
The space shuttle did not have engines. ;-)
Both do land on the earth, at least using landing gear, one way or the other.
1900 knts is way faster than Mach 2. In fact 1900 knts at 80,000 feet is over mach 3.
Yeah, but the space shuttle was really nothing more than a big, fat, expensive UPS truck. And not nearly as dependable.
Of course, lest we forget, there was this North American thingy called the X-15 ...
The shuttle had boosters, which were then disposed of... with the engines (and fuel limitations, it is no where near the 71)..
The Pratt & Whitney J58 documentation for that application covered a range of figures up to Mach 4.2, coordinating altitude, range, fuel burn rate, power derating based on altitude above FL72, etc. The chart curves indicated Mach ~3.2 gave the best range.