My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass: <a href="http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041" rel="nofollow">http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912704...</a>
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.
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.
I enjoy science-fiction, but I'm not an aircraft aficionado. What makes the SR-71 so awesome <i>to me</i> is that it looks like about the coolest spacecraft I could have imagined when I was 10 years old. And it still looks that way to me.
" 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."<p>Why not just copy the U2 and make an improved, unmanned version?
i highly recommend reading this guy's hunt for the wrecked A-12 (the CIA's early variant of the SR-71):<p><a href="http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/" rel="nofollow">http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...</a>
The thing that really amazes me is that these badass planes were designed with slide rules, drafting tables, and wind tunnels. No fluid-flow simulations; these things predate the CDC6600. The engineering was as badass as the product.
If you like the SR-71, and are interested in other Skunk Works projects like the U-2 and F-117, the book Skunk Works is a great read (and also a great audio book).<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/...</a>
I met a gentleman around 20-25 years ago that told me the story of the "$500 hammer". Years ago the press went crazy that the government was overpaying for tools for military projects. This guy gave me "the rest of the story". The cost for tooling is what it should be for a limited run of "special metal" tools. I'm guessing the tool manufacturer had to shutdown their normal operations to supply Skunkworks with all new tools. It would have cost a fortune. Not to mention the secrecy surrounding why some company wanted titanium tools. I don't recall if he mentioned the tools were make of titanium, but he did mention that the chrome bake on normal tools had caused problems on the SR-71 project. I'm glad to see that this little tidbit of information was covered in the article.
Q: what counter measures did the blackbird have against surface-to-air missiles?<p>A: it would simply fly faster than them.<p>What ana amazing piece of engineering.
You can talk about the unobtainium skin, the Pratt-Whitney engines, the radar-bouncing fuselage angles but what really made it such a bad ass plane was Kelly Johnson and his team.
I read the Ben Rich book "Skunk Works" about 15 years ago. I've never forgotten the ending.<p>Towards the end of his life Kelly Johnson suffered from dementia.<p>They wheeled him out on a runway and there was a fly-past of SR-71s.<p>Ben asks Kelly "Did you see that? They were saluting you!" I was bawling when I read first that and I am tearing up now. Talk about Epic Men.
The hunt for the A-12[0], "its sneaky black older brother", is a fun read.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/" rel="nofollow">http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...</a>
Consider that not much more than a decade before the SR-71 project started the state of the art in plane design was canvas over a wooden frame with a V12 engine that went at 300mph.<p>How much technology did they have to invent from first principles to build a plane which flew at Mach 3 at the edge of space? Using slide rules and chalk boards?
I had a coworker once who claimed that he got a ride on one before it was declassified. Apparently he was waiting at an air station to go home on leave and was constantly being bumped from flights by higher ranks. A "special" fight came in that he could get on, though, after signing some paperwork to keep quiet about it.
The first I remember reading about the "Blackbird" was in the _The Uncanny X-Men_, during the Claremont & Byrne run in the early 80's. Their jet was modeled on the SR-71, although I don't recall if they explicitly mentioned that model number.
> the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend.<p>Does nobody proofread these articles anymore? A missing word in the first sentence. This sort of sloppy publishing really doesn't leave a good first impression with the reader.
A nice video tour of the SR-71 cockpit (front and rear) by a former pilot. A must watch for any Blackbird enthusiast. - <a href="https://youtu.be/tj9UwKQKE3A" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/tj9UwKQKE3A</a>
i can remember watching these take off/land at Kadena air base in Okinawa while i was stationed in Camp Hansen (USMC).<p>We assume they were flying recon missions over North Korea. They would take off then quickly bank almost 180 degrees<p>we referred to them as "Habu" because that's how the locals called them, which is the name of the large black (and extremely poisonous) snake indigenous to the island.<p>i recall reading that the SR-71 was originally designed as a strategic interceptor, rather than a long-range recon bird.
Guys, I thought NASA is not supposed to disclose it's military affiliations publicly?<p>"As reported in PM, NASA is currently the revisiting the supersonic spy plane concept. It recently awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Skunk to test the feasibility of the SR-2, a supersonic drone that would fly almost twice the speed of the Blackbird. The idea is that speed would play the role that stealth once did in beating enemy air defense network. "
What the OP forgets to mention is that the 71 was not intended initially as a surveillance aircraft. It was meant as an interceptor. The phoenix missile system, of f14 fame, was initially meant for an SR71/Oxcart-type airframe. This thing was mean to shoot down valkyrie-class bombers. That image of mach3/4 aircraft chasing each other down never really happened.
Cool post, I didn't know the part where the plane was retired shortly after the Soviets managed to put together an aircraft and missile combo, along with well-organized operations, that could plausibly shoot down the SR-71.
The M-21 was the most bad-ass of the bad-asses.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21</a>
I think I learned about this plane through the abridged version of Hellsing Ultimate... and then sucking up every detail about it I could... Quite an amazing piece of engineering indeed.<p>"Do you even <i>read</i> my christmas list?"
I didn't make it past the first lovely sentence. "With a sleek needle nose and a swept double-delta wing with two prominent nacelles, the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend."<p>SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.