The SR71

No SR71 planes have been shot down. >>

Interesting stuff! I've had some experience machining this stuff, if I remember correctly it was C172, but I could be mistaken. It seems the melt point was around 1600 deg, maybe the nozzles don't get real warm.

Well, then there's a certain well known glider that has been clocked at

17,000 mph .

But the real question is "does Aurora exist and if so what can it do".

Actually it's classified as a "hypersonic reentry vehicel" or some such nonsense - otherwise the FAA, EPA and friends wouldn't let it land. To make sense of it, you need to think like a governement employee: there is no regulation against a hypersonic reentry vehicle flying over over US airspace.

That reminds me of an intersting exchange in the mid 80s. A friend interviews with TRW or Lockheed, etc., and comes back talking about radar for the F-19. Ok, don't think much more of it for a while. Later I'm at an airshow looking at an F-15 or something, and ask a nearby officer for an update on the F-19. I didn't just get told there was no F-19: I was told "THERE IS NO F-19!!!!!!!" - the dude lost it. Not long after that, something, rumored to be an F-19, crashed in California (sadly killing the pilot IIRC).

Bill

Viagra as a propellent?

The FARs regarding supersonic flight apply specifically to "civil aircraft". The Shuttle is owned and operated by the government on government business and so is not a "civil aircraft".

Have no idea how the EPA would get involved, but given that they don't have any problem with the government keeping nerve gas and atomic bombs I doubt that they're going to have any problem with it operating any particular type of aircraft.

In any case, FAA, EPA, and NASA all have the same boss.

Was it possibly Northrop with whom he interviewed?

The story on the F-19 designation is not clear, but it's unlikely that Aurora would have been given an "F" designator unless there was a planned interceptor version, and that's pretty unlikely.

I believe the plane that was called F-19 in unofficial circles was what turned out to be the F-117.

Jim

The SR-71 was the bird that carried the D-20 drone. The SR-71's predecessor was, as I understand it, the CIA's YF-12. That plane was very similar to the SR-71, although there were some minor airframe differences, as well as payload options.

Jim

The fuel they used was designated as JP-7. It was like a jelly.

John

The intake of the engines was designed to move the shock wave to the intake of the compressor turbines. This was done by moving the cone in and out of the intake of the engines to position the compressive sonic wave at the intake for each velocity of the aircraft. At the plus mach speeds the engine compressors became ineffective and the engines were being operated as a ram jet. The mig 25 had a variation of this system

John

fixed orbit times how many birds becomes the question

I'd be extremly surprised if there is not a military observation sattelite in range to take a photo of any given place on earth once every 4 hours but thats a wild-assed guess and cynicism

plus as mentioned earlier close and fast surveillance can be done by UAV's

the cycle time on a sattelite is probably equal or shorter than the amount of time it takes an Sr71 to Take off Fuel up (through the aforementioned procedure) take its pictures and return home

and even assuming that it could encode and radio the pictures ahead of itself to ge tthem back in time youre still looking at a cycle time of several hours even at mach 3+ to get an sr-71 over the area you care about

That and these days we don't really gather intelligence anymore--we just make it up. (:

[disclaimer: the above is merely a wisecrack. Note the smiley. If you find it amusing, enjoy. If you find yourself offended, rather than pollute rcm with yet another thread about politics I humbly request that you direct your angry replies to my email address.]

Could be. I never knew the friend in quesetion all that well, but doubt he would run his mouth had he been told to keep it shut, and they would not give guarded info during an interview anyway. My hunch is somebody let it slip and either didn't "debrief" him (aka admit they screwed up) or just didn't realize they did it.

Either way, you should have seen that officer blow up on me. One thing was clear: there _was_ an F-19 ;)

Bill

I very clearly remember the head shaking at the silliness, and it came from very good sources.

Bill

One proposed use if what we call the SR-71 was to be an armed version to counter Russian bombers, incomming. I *think* the concept if what became the Phoenix A-A missile was to be the pointy end of the attack SR-71.

2 are listed as operational at this page: MikeH