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

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

#111

Post by eesmith »

ethbro wrote: post #68
badosu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America, f\ \ k yeah! ... Sarcasm aside, wouldn't this be a severe case of violation of sovereignity? I find it hard to believe such a stupid act could have been performed without making news or retaliations. (By stupid act I mean entering unpermitted airspace, the pilot's actions are irrelevant)

Before intelligence needs could be solved by satellite imagery, violating airspace for military purposes wasn't exactly rare. Everyone largely agreed it wasn't in anyone's best interest to talk about it publicly though.

I do think it's odd that the Soviet government knew we were sending planes through their airspace for surveillance purposes, and the US government knew that the Soviet government knew, but the US government decided that the US population shouldn't know.

When Powers was shot down, the US started with the cover story that it was a weather research aircraft. Then Khrushchev was able to embarrass the US by revealing that they had Powers, evidence that it was a surveillance plane, and demonstrate that the US had been lying to the public.

So, why did the US government lie to it's own people? Why wasn't in their best interest to talk about it publicly?

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

#114

Post by oasisbob »

amenghra wrote: post #112

The hunt for the A-12[0], "its sneaky black older brother", is a fun read. [0] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...

Oh no! That site is such a fun magnificent time suck. I lost the link, guess it's time to take another dive back in.

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

#115

Post by hudibras »

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?

My guess is there is a secret successor (manned or unmanned) to the SR-71 already flying right now.

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

#117

Post by masklinn »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77
dboreham wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. $1000!! I own two copies because I thought I had lost mine and so bought a second for $10 or so. Then I found the first one.

Would you be willing to lend one out to be scanned for the Internet Archive? I have no relation other than finding books to be digitized and paying for/coordinating the scanning. I’m willing to provide insurance and proof of my identity to ensure your property is respected.

PDFs are pretty easy to find, it's only the physical book which is rare.

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

#118

Post by sytelus »

One of the most amazing fact I'd learned was that invisibility to radars was not mostly due to the absorbing material but rather a specific geometry of the plane! The materials certainly enhanced it but it was still like 25% or so contribution. Even more amazing fact was that this possibility was first discussed in a Russian research paper but that was never followed through because it was too complex to compute such shape and no one believed it would actually work. The folks at Stunkworks got hold of the paper, hired a mathematician and used computers to do the computation to actually find the shape that would have invisibility property to radars. No one in army at the time believed that some special shape can just become invisible to radar. They did the demo to army to prove it and landed their contract. Considering all these was in 1960s, its just amazing.

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

#119

Post by masklinn »

wallace_f wrote: post #58
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…

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 advanta…

> 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]

It went both ways, Glushko consisered Korolev to be irresponsibly cavalier and autocratic with anything outside of [Korolev's] specialities, which included Glushko's (liquid-fueld rocket engines).

> had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized

Probably not: Glushko's OKB-456 controlled the design of high-power liquid-fueld engines (which would ultimately lead to the RD-170 and its various derivatives), Korolev refused Glushko's engine design (RD-270), Glushko thus refused working with Korolev and on LOX/Kerosene engines[0].

It was Korolev who decided to go with a metric fuckton of NK-15 instead of listening to Glushko.

[0] he would ultimately design the LOX/Kerosene RD-170, but 20 years after the F1, one of the reasons for refusing to do so for the N1 was the lacking techno-industrial environment and inferior coke-prone fuels available to him in the 60s)

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

#120

Post by josephcooney »

kevincennis wrote: post #7

For anyone who's interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works" – about Lockheed's famous operation that designed the SR-71, U-2, F-117 (stealth fighter), etc.

I also really enjoyed this book, and wrote up some notes on what I took away from it that I thought could apply to software engineering https://jcooney.net/post/2017/08/03/skunkworks.html
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