The SR-71 Blackbird

Richard Branson is working on something that will leave the Earth's atmosphere.

What makes you think they haven't? All new planes are secret for at least a while. And there have been many rumors.

Just because some members of Congress and others have complained about not having a sucessor only means that:

a) they don't know of the existance of one.

b) they *do* know about one and are actively engaged in a little deception.

Yeah.

Skunkworks lives !!

Speed for the SR-71 was a defensive value. It was purely a spy plane as to achieve those speeds, it couldn't carry/deploy ordinance or provide tactical support like an AWACs. That issue probably remains, which is why you don't see modern military planes developed that can reach such high speeds. And the job of the Blackbird has been replaced by spy satellites, so continued development isn't a high priority.

I could of course be wrong as I don't know what the military is working on.

And the job of the Blackbird has been replaced by spy satellites,

To a large part yes. Sat Imagery has it benefits but don't forget the Sat's tend to be rather fixed in their orbits (they're hard to move from Australia to Denmark, for example..), and their orbits can be known ahead of time and 'decieved'. Aircraft such as the '71 could be up, over the target, snap a couple of shots, and be back down before a satellite is in position.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have a handful of F117 Stealth fighters reconfigured for high-altitude, high-speed reconnaissance standing by and staged at appropriate locations. Of course, they'll never tell us if the planes are already flying missions, until years after the fact.

Depends on what you mean by high speed. The F-117 has been retired, and it was a subsonic aircraft; the stealth features forced that. The SR-71 flew over 2000 mph. No comparison.

the airmen who had experience with that aircraft had patches with the 3.5 mach over the relief shadow of the Bird...it flew faster than that.. again: mission profiles of those 2 airplanes is apples to oranges

"it couldn't carry/deploy ordinance or provide tactical support like an AWACs."

That is not 100% true. It could conceivably provide tactical recon data, and probably has on a number of occasions. There were a number of flights over cuba during the missile crisis as well as over the golan heights during the six day war, and again in 1973.

Also, while it had no offensive capabilities, there was a hypersonic drone that was designed to be air launched from the SR-71 called the D-21. That drone could have been reconfigured to be offensive, but it never was. The later models of the SR-71 lacked the mount for the drone.

READ the link in #27, and you'll see that it DID have provisions for carrying ordinance. It wasn't intended as ground attack (i.e., Air-to-Ground) but it was certainly adaptable. And the Air-to-Air (read "defensive", except that one early version was designed as an interceptor) carried low-yield nukes, by design, in its Air-to-Air missiles. Now THAT is ordinance, not to be dismissed lightly, nor trifled with!

And the radar it carried was certainly capable of tactical use, though it was primarily long-range air search. But the tactical use doctrines governing intelligence collected by highly classified air assets put the data collected back in the analyst's hands here in the US, or at remote and highly protected sites overseas, where it did not, in any timely fashion, make it back to the hands of the "guys on the ground", with the result that while it WAS tactical data, like as not, it wasn't available for tactical deployment, because by the time it did make it back out to the trenches, it had already expired.

Micah

That was the YF-12A that could carry the AIM-47A missile, not the SR-71, but they were quite similar. I suppose one could have retrofitted an SR-71 for offensive weapons, but it would have required adding a second crew member and retrofitting the cockpit for two crew. Not a minor undertaking.

Granting the point about retrofitting, I have heard many people say that the YF-12A and the SR-71 weren't the same bird. But that is somewhat like saying a DC-3 and the C-47 transport were not the same. They were the same airframe, the same skin, the same underlying structure and technology. Just not the same mission, or the same specific mission oriented equipment. I think that they were in essence the same plane. They just followed a different development path to their final character.

And the YF-12A only had the second cockpit for the purpose of running its very powerful electronics suite, primarily the radar (according to the folks who worked/flew them). Missiles of the day may have required a second bod to control them, but the detail available (again, from the same people who flew/worked them) indicates that the missile had a fairly smart guidance system, which COULD have used IR homing in the final phase of flight (didn't, using the radar paint echo to do its course corrections. Probably why it needed a nuke warhead to do the job, since it wasn't going to be dead on, with the radar of the day), so it might not have needed a second operator to handle the radar (use the radar up to mid/late-course, and then let the IR take over, whence the radar goes back to an automated air-search mode. And radar of the day, some at least, DID have an automated air-search capability, with rudimentary notifications of findings worthy of note.).

Micah

exactly how many times were you around the " Bird..?

It's not a question of why can't you, but why would you? There needs to be a need for these sort of projects. We don't need superfast spy planes anymore, we have other means.

...and why make cars that can do 400 kilometers per hour if they are not allowed to drive it at those speeds? Because they can! So why no new planes that can beat the black bird?

Is it the same as the pyramids. They could'nt do it, then they made something like the pyramids and then...we can't make it any more...

Because people pay to watch race cars.

It takes $billions to develop these planes. It's not something that Valvolene is going to underright.

what to day does not take bilions to develop?

99% of everything.

Amazing analogy.

Pyramids were monuments to pharaohs who were revered as gods. The pyramids were built with slave labor.

We no longer revere our leaders as gods (some exceptions, as in large portions of the US population post 20 Jan 09) and we no longer have slave labor.

Hence we have no need for pyramids. If we did however, we have machines that would take the place of slave labor, and it wouldn't take twenty years to build one. Unless of course it was built to gov't specs and standards...

If we needed a new Blackbird, we would build one (unless we already have).

And surely someone had the foresight to keep a little of Clarence "Kelly" Johnson's DNA on ice so we could clone that genius when that technology is finally perfected...

Guests are invariably rude and ill mannered. You fit the norm troll......

Now if you really want to be noticed and listened to, get a name......a certain amount of genuine backbone is a requirement......

This is a way off-topic jog off the original thread topic. I feel no need to identify myself. If we are going to have a socio-political/economic thread on slavery vs. wage slavery, I will be happy to weigh in.

how long has the Parthenon been under " rebuilding"..?? over 30 years

Here is one possibility.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/ucav.htm

Did the Nasa not get on for "test" purposes?

As an earlier 'Guest' posted, what makes you think there isn't something far advanced now. While I agree the needs have changed, the research hasn't.

I once had a friend who was a research physicist for one of the major 'skunk works' , and of course he didn't tell me any details, but even 20 years ago he was eluding to some of the research happening (now I know where the got the basis for Eureka). I kept pushing him as to how such things could be kept a secret. "Easy", he said. "It's called 'gray propaganda' ... just leak bits and pieces of the real story to non-credible sources and it just gets laughed off. We have whole departments who specialize in that." Another interesting thing is how he said his projects were often 'stopped' because it was discovered 'someone else' was already working on 'that' ... I guess, one of the ways to keep secrets is to not let the 'right hand' know what the 'left hand' is doing.

I'm no conspiracy theorist ... don't have the time ... but, I do believe there are all sorts of projects that are probably of a nature at which we would all be astounded. We'll never really know until something is finally (if ever) disclosed. But it IS fun to speculate .

[excuse me, I gotta go ... my invisible, anti-gravity, mach-20 craft is double-parked ]

Kind regards ...

They took the SR-71 and its variants out of service because the missions were covered by other means. Can we build something superior....certainly, how about a craft that does not reach orbital speeds and receives "rocket" power and steering in space. The velocity was limited by skin temps in atmosphere.

New "birds" are radar defeating drones that don't need to fly that fast or high to be effective. Planes like the predator are an indication of what may be in the air now but with far more sophistication and ability.

"Can we build something superior....certainly, how about a craft that does not reach orbital speeds and receives "rocket" power and steering in space."

Already done, way back when. The X-15, which lost it's bid, politically, to be the first US orbital platform to von Braun and his rockets.

"They" can and have and it's out there... Though necessity and money are probably the biggest hurdles at the moment.

Anyway, "I" have one :)

http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/Exhibits/AirAndSpace/AirAndAircraft/A12/A12.php

Thank you for your reply. Money set aside, why do you think they can't make something faster and cheaper, 40 years later?

Again, what makes you think they can't? The question should be why don't they? Again it is because you can do the job so much cheaper and easier in another way.

But there are still the fundamental laws of the universe, in the ensuing 40 years, the melting points of metals haven't changed, Materials Science has made some great strides, but not so much in high strength-high temp materials. Materials Science has moved in other directions, because that was where the low hanging fruit still lay.

You can NEVER set aside the issue of money because it is fundamental to every project. People and governments generally speaking do not things simply because they are "cool" or "neat". They do it because there is a specific need that outweighs the cost of development (or at least there is the perception that it does. People and governments can often delude themselves on this point.). Most people are fundamentally rational like that, they generally don't throw that kind of money down ratholes for no apparent reason.

Hi Quobaldt - I bet former SR-71 pilot Colonel Richard Graham (retired) might know - he gave a fascinating lecture to my local ASME section last year at RPI engineering college in Troy, NY: http://sections.asme.org/hudson-mohawk/2008_Apr_Newsletter_v3.pdf. He tours the U.S. (and abroad?) giving lectures and has books available on Amazon and at your local bookstore. - Larry

Hi guys, see this link, 8500km\h

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-43A

Does anyone know why McNamara ordered the tooling destroyed?

As an economy measure, I could understand canning production and even taking them out of service, but destroying the tooling provides no financial gain, only possible loss.

sounds like Diefenbaker and the Avro Arrow.

It just means that the stupidest people have too much power. It defies any intelligent explanation.

Chris