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Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

thesr71blackbird.com

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Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#81

Post by CircleSpokes »

mardifoufs wrote: post #14

I love stories about America violating sovreign airspace, especially when they use such a cool plane. The entire world is truly their own backyard!

What a ridiculous thing to say. Do you think the Libyan intelligence service gets to bomb dance clubs and then cry sovereignty when someone bombs some military targets in Libya? I don't know if you are ignorant of the situation or if you truly believe a country cannot retaliate against an attack against their citizens and allies. (This story and the bombing campaigned being photographed by the SR71 was a direct response to the West Berlin discotheque bombing in 1986).

>The entire world is truly their own backyard!

Yes..? If you are a state actor like Libya and you attack other nations civilians to cause terror then they have the right to attack you back. The US bombing Gaddafi's compounds and some other military targets in Libya was 100% justified. To act like a country can't retaliate in such a situation is honestly childish.

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#82

Post by jlack »

scrlk wrote: post #2

It's a shame that the book that this story came from - Sled Driver by Brian Shul - is out of print. The SR-71 speed check story is another good read: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

He sells his books anytime he gives a talk. I got an autographed copy ~5 years ago when he was a speaker at the museum of flight in Seattle during the seafair airshow.

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#83

Post by pc86 »

throwmeaway1212 wrote: post #48
ben7799 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is really odd, as Titanium is not that rare. Are we sure that story about the Titanium coming from the USSR is accurate?

It's a fairly well known and documented story, do you have anything similar in evidence rather than just conjecture?

[flagged]

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#84

Post by [deleted] »

mardifoufs wrote: post #80
davidu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world hates that the US is the world police, but then constantly demands the US be the world police.

There is a huge difference between patrolling international tradeways or helping nato allies, and invading or violating foreign countries on a whim with absolutely 0 consequences.

[deleted]

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#85

Post by pc86 »

frantathefranta wrote: post #18
suzzer99 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do this story - but some person flying a Kitty Hawk replica 30 feet off the ground chimes in after the Cessna person.

Next logical step would be the Antonov An-2 flying at negative ground speed, backwards.

To be fair you can do that in a 172 as well (but it's obviously not negative ground speed). My CFI took me up on a particularly windy day so we could fly 3kts backwards.

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#86

Post by bombcar »

geocrasher wrote: post #25

Indeed, Mach 3.5 is the declared top speed in this story, but higher speeds are implied. The Mach eases to 3.5 as we crest 80,000 feet... Screaming past Tripoli, our phenomenal speed continues to rise... I realize that I still have my left hand full-forward and we're continuing to rocket along in maximum afterburner... The TDI now shows us Mach numbers, not only new to our experience but flat out scary. He mentions u…

> It's truly incredible that the A12/SR-71 aircraft was designed without the benefit of modern computing.

One of the huge things that computers give us is the ability to simulate where the design limits actually are - you can "relatively" easily design a device that needs to do "at least X" but once you're done, you don't really know how far past X you can go - computer simulations can help discover where and what exactly fails.

(Some limits like boat "hull speed" are easier to find than others).

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#87

Post by oh_sigh »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #65
igravious wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of America violating sovereign airspace are drawing to a close, thankfully. “The United States-initiated aerial bombing of targets inside the borders of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah which took place on April 15, 1986, was met with substantial and immediate criticism by the world community. The positive reaction from the U.S. congress and the American public was not shared by much of the world. Arab nations de…

I wouldn't hold my breath... The US launched an airstrike in an illegally-occupied (Syria) nation less than a week ago. https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/25/us-carries-out-airstrike...

Illegally occupied according to who?

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#88

Post by pc86 »

93po wrote: post #68
saganus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the "Skunk Works" book they explain that you could throw a lit cigarette directly into a puddle of fuel and it would not ignite, due to the very high temps needed.

Cigarettes also won't ignite regular car gas

Yes but for a different reason - car gas because it's the vapors which ignite, so if you toss a cigarette on a fresh puddle of car gas you're going to have a very bad day. For planes it's due to the much higher temperatures required, the worst thing you'll do tossing a cigarette into a fresh puddle of jet fuel is burn your finger.

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#89

Post by sbaiddn »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #72
sbaiddn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adrian Newley is aerodynamist and the current chief designer of Red Bull (current champions and top of the season). He has won more F1 champions than any other designer. He draws his cars on paper. Granted, I'm sure someone digitizes his designs and runs them through a CFD suite, if for no other reason that wind tunnel time rule limited. Still.

It’s a nice story to read about rock star engineers but F1 race car aerodynamics is not done on paper. Sure concepts to try can be sketched out on paper. Things like wing arrangements, rough intuitive ideas about where the clean and dirty air is. But everything in F1 is an iterative loop between a lap time simulation, vehicle dynamics, and aerodynamics. Vehicle performance is largely a trade off between Cornering dyn…

Obviously they use computers. My point is that Newley, (claims at least) to do his design work on paper.

Which, is not that surprising. If you're good enough to have a draughtman digitize your designs for you, you're free to draw what you want on a five by four foot surface and not fiddle with a GUI and a 30?, 40? inch screen.

Overnight they print you the latest drawing on the plotter and you're back to you doing you. Id live to have a secretary print me my work and then digitize it in the evening.

Re: Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird

#90

Post by kube-system »

hcrisp wrote: post #78
vlovich123 wrote: post #27

The dates in the story are confusing me. > My first encounter with the SR-71 came when I was 10 years old in the form of molded black plastic in a Revell kit. > Twenty-nine years later, I stood awe-struck in a Beale Air Force Base hangar, staring at the very real SR-71 before me. > In 1962, the first Blackbird successfully flew, and in 1966, the same year I graduated from high school, the Air Force began flying opera…

I built an SR-71 model rocket. It was Estes, not Revell, and looked like this [0]. It was very difficult to build compared to other models, because it had three cylinders with webbing for the fuselage and engines. I remember being disappointed that the two outer cylinders were not designed to take individual model rocket engines. There was only one in the center. I guess it would have been too hard to ignite them syn…

Thanks for posting this. I built that same kit back when it was new, but at the time it was just some estes rocket to me -- I just now realized it was an SR-71.
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