MaxxVolume
Lunatic Member
This is a bit long-ish, but well worth the time to watch it. The last few minutes of this really chokes me up....this magnificent 50 year-old bird will touch the very edge of space, and that, my friends, is SOMETHING....
Great SR-71 Blackbird video
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I'm not choked up, just got something in my eye. Seems to always happen whenever I watch SR-71s in flight or Saturn 5 launches. Probably allergies.
Edited to add that in my view this is far, far, far more impressive than anything the space billionaires are doing today. Designed with a slide rule and piloted by man, I doubt we'll ever see anything like it again.
Edited to add that in my view this is far, far, far more impressive than anything the space billionaires are doing today. Designed with a slide rule and piloted by man, I doubt we'll ever see anything like it again.
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thank you
Pio1980
AK Member
The thing that stuck with me from a tour of the Hill AFB museum was that the SR-71 successfully operated at the ragged edge (or perhaps a bit beyond) what the SOTA was then capable, at great effort and expense. As a schooling for what would follow, a fruitful contribution to the art of powered flight.
No Radar!, No computer! .... Wow! I guess at 90K feet, you can "see" where you're going ... LOL. I found the statement "it would always go a little bit faster" tantalizing in light of the fact that SR-71 top speed remains classified. Nebraska in 4-1/2 minutes??? Sheez! He did say that the SLED would do Mach 3 in a climb, so ?????? Wow - with 1964 technology! WTH must they be building now?
whoaru99
Epic Member
There wasn't anything else up there to avoid.
The official top airspeed of 3.2 was exceeded by Brian Shul to 3.5 while dodging a Libyan missile in 1986.
Tim Yarrow, a retired Skunk Works electrical engineer for the plane is on record as saying "Faster than widely published."
I'm sure today's computers can easily figure out how fast it could go, but I'd also love to see some hard evidence on how fast it did go. It's about time!
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A Russian R-33 missile could. Indeed, a MiG-31 Foxhound shadowed and had its S-33 locked on an SR-71 outside Russian airspace back in 1986; 6 similar MiGs did a coordinated intercept of a Blackbird the same year.nothing they could shoot at it could catch it anyway
This Cold War kid remembers the hoopla about the Gary Powers U-2 shootdown and his subsequent imprisonment in Russia (aren’t U-2s still flying, btw?). And later, when its existence was confirmed to the public, the Lockheed A-12 Oxcart that preceded the slightly-slower SR-71.
What a plane! I had an experience with one in late 1969 when it came in for an emergency landing at our airbase in Arizona. Apparently the pilot was having trouble with his oxygen system, so I was driven out to the flight line to test the oxygen regulator in the plane. I'd seen pictures of it, of course, but was pretty dumbfounded at just its size. I climbed the ladder into the cockpit and just stood there frozen-there was so much stuff in there I couldn't even find the regulator. I finally saw the oxygen hose in the seat and traced that back to the regulator, performed the test and then the MP's herded me out of there very quickly. It turned out the pilot had a flaw in the seal of his oxygen mask that was quickly replaced and he went on his way. They waited until nightfall for takeoff so less people would be watching. I didn't get to see it leave.
Pio1980
AK Member
SR-71 Blackbird was so fast that the F-15 Eagle radar couldn’t see it
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/did...ast-that-the-f-15-eagle-radar-couldnt-see-it/
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/did...ast-that-the-f-15-eagle-radar-couldnt-see-it/
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