Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

popularmechanics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 156 posts

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

#51

Post by Gargoyle »

strictnein wrote: post #14
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?

The U-2 was developed in 18 months with COTS goods and requires a finesse to fly that I think would be tough to replicate with computers. And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.

The U-2 is so difficult to fly that it requires external sensors to land. AKA another pilot racing down the runway in a chase car radioing instructions to the pilot in the plane.

https://jalopnik.com/5537629/the-140-mph-chase-cars-of-the-u...

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

#53

Post by da02 »

cyberferret wrote: post #20
mikeokner wrote: post #3

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

That story is out of Brian Schul's book (he used to be an SR-71 pilot). I am lucky enough that years ago, a girl who had a crush on me bought me that book. Its out of print now, and I've seen copies on eBay for > $1000. Next to Ben Rich's "Skunk Works", it is one of the best books on the SR-71 that I have ever read.

What happened to the girl? Did you marry her? That was a good, thoughtful gift.

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

#54

Post by dmoy »

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

It's a running gag on some websites now (apparently including hacker news) that whenever there's a mention of the sr71, that story gets posted.

I still read it every time too.

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

#55

Post by Terr_ »

ProAm wrote: post #21
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 th…

> the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics

There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

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

#56

Post by mathperson »

jandrese wrote: post #39
strictnein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U-2 was developed in 18 months with COTS goods and requires a finesse to fly that I think would be tough to replicate with computers. And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.

The U-2 is basically a F-104 with glider wings. The landing gear situation is something only crazy cold war people would approve of. It's a testament to the engineering that what was by all rights a quick hack job has managed to stand the test of time.

"The landing gear situation is something only crazy cold war people would approve of."

oh gee whiz. this is such a great comment. I almost spilled coffee laughing on my keyboard. A+.

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

#57

Post by rconti »

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…

They mentioned the SR-1 program again later in the article too. I even had to Google it to make sure it wasn't me with the misunderstanding.

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

#58

Post by wallace_f »

ProAm wrote: post #21
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 th…

Also, note the Vanguard rocket. We lost the space race due to politics. We had the people who knew how to build it--who later built the Saturn V--and after they did, were promptly kicked out.

The Soviets had childish, despicable politics of their own going on, with important rocket engineers like Korolev being accused by his colleague Glushko of treason, sending Korolev to the gulag for Glushko's professional advantage.[1]

Korolev went on to help design to Tupolev tu-2, a formidable bomber in WWII, from prison. Later he was Chief Designer of the Soviet's rocket program before dying of cancer (had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized).

Maybe the reason we see no signs of life in the universe is that all life evolves to conquer itself.

1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment

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

#59

Post by ProAm »

Terr_ wrote: post #55
ProAm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

Ill watch this later. They talk about testing the Bradley in the book and how they pretty much fudged all the tests to get it into service even though people knew it would be a tomb for soldiers if they ever went to war in it.

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

#60

Post by itsgreene »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #32
strictnein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U-2 was developed in 18 months with COTS goods and requires a finesse to fly that I think would be tough to replicate with computers. And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.

"tough to replicate with computers" I was under the impression that computers can fly planes which are impossible for humans to fly (e.g. the F-117, or any fighter with forward-swept wings). Since the U-2 is much closer to a "conventional" aircraft, and can be stick-flown by a human, wouldn't it be a walk in the park for a compute to fly it?

I'm not saying a computer can't fly the U2, but I do think it'd be more complex than a conventional aircraft. It has some pretty unique flight characteristics. From Wikipedia:

"...To maintain their operational ceiling of 70,000 feet (21,000 m), the early U-2A and U-2C models had to fly very near their never-exceed speed (VNE). The margin between that maximum speed and the stall speed at that altitude was only 10 knots (12 mph; 19 km/h). This narrow window is called the "coffin corner", because breaching either limit would likely cause airflow separation at the wings or tail. For most of the time on a typical mission the U-2 was flying less than five knots above stall speed. A stall would cause a loss of altitude, possibly leading to detection and overstress of the airframe."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

Post reply on HN