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What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

popularmechanics.com

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Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#21

Post by ProAm »

jotm wrote: post #9

" The U-2 can still fly higher than the Global Hawk, carry a greater payload, and its sensors have more of a slant range. The Global Hawk also lacks de-icing equipment and countermeasures against Russian SAMs. We may be entering the age of drones, but old-fashioned piloted planes can still do a thing or two." Why not just copy the U2 and make an improved, unmanned version?

If you are interested in how the Pentagon, Air Force and Navy decides to fund and build aircraft, I highly recommend reading this book [1]. It's about the father of the A-10, F15 (sort of), F-16 and FA-18. Fascinating read about how the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics. (it's about the life of John Boyd, not just how aircraft a chosen but its covered quite a bit in the book)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#22

Post by mikeokner »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18
strictnein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good one (although some may dislike it): On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing. The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirag…

How does a middle finger get transmitted? Had ascii art handy?

Morse code of ASCII art I think

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#24

Post by strictnein »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18
strictnein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good one (although some may dislike it): On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing. The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirag…

How does a middle finger get transmitted? Had ascii art handy?

They were within visible distance, so he just used his hand up against the window. The plane really was right off the wing. Think Top Gun, with less inversion.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#25

Post by jonah »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18
strictnein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good one (although some may dislike it): On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing. The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirag…

How does a middle finger get transmitted? Had ascii art handy?

If they were that close, out the window.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#26

Post by ProAm »

onesun wrote: post #2

I didn't make it past the first lovely sentence. "With a sleek needle nose and a swept double-delta wing with two prominent nacelles, the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend." SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.

Good old hacker news where people would rather discuss how the article was written instead of the content it contains.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#27

Post by cyberferret »

kevincennis wrote: post #16
onesun wrote: post #2

I didn't make it past the first lovely sentence. "With a sleek needle nose and a swept double-delta wing with two prominent nacelles, the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend." SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.

You stopped reading the entire article because they dropped an "of"?

I must admit that I picked up on the "SR-1" typo. If this was my local daily rag article, I could forgive, but for a technical publication that is supposed to give us accurate, meaningful data, that immediately sows some distrust that the rest of the information in the article may be suspect. Grammatical errors I can forgive to a certain extent, but getting the designation of the aircraft wrong that is the feature of the article? That is sloppy editing.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#29

Post by kevincennis »

cyberferret wrote: post #27
kevincennis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You stopped reading the entire article because they dropped an "of"?

I must admit that I picked up on the "SR-1" typo. If this was my local daily rag article, I could forgive, but for a technical publication that is supposed to give us accurate, meaningful data, that immediately sows some distrust that the rest of the information in the article may be suspect. Grammatical errors I can forgive to a certain extent, but getting the designation of the aircraft wrong that is the feature of…

I actually didn't even notice that until you put it in quotes just now.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#30

Post by dgritsko »

jonah wrote: post #23
mikeokner wrote: post #3

My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912704...

One of my favorites. Here's Brian Shul telling the story live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI

That was great, you can tell he really loves telling that story. Here's an excerpt from an interview with him [1] where he discusses telling it:

> When I'm doing a talk, if I don't tell that speed check story, they run me out of town. I tried that one year, I thought, I've been speaking at this air museum for 10 years now, I'm gonna change it up this year. People lost their minds. I realized hey, Elvis has to sing Love Me Tender at the end of every show, I gotta tell that story no matter how many times I tell it.

> And there's always people who've never heard it. I told it at an FBI conference the other day, out of 800 people I swear 700 had never heard it, and they were falling out of their chairs.

[1]: https://newatlas.com/brian-shul-interview-sr-71-blackbird-pi...

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