Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird

[P3RG4R3C]

Awesome jet, but looks so wrong with the double cockpit IMO.

[nopassn]

hott shit #13

[nopassn]

hott shit #14

Awesome jet, but looks so wrong with the double cockpit IMO.

they all have a double cocpit... I assume you're talking about the SR-71B, which has the bubbled up rear cocpit - that version is the "trainer" version...

[nopassn]

hott shit #15... last one...

[P3RG4R3C]

they all have a double cocpit... I assume you're talking about the SR-71B, which has the bubbled up rear cocpit - that version is the "trainer" version...

Yes, that's what I thought.

[d-quik]

pwned by satelites and unmanned recon vehicles/aircraft

[johnnynumfiv]

It's amazing that this was made in the 60's, imagine what they have now and aren't showing us. 0_o.

Awesome pics.

Just a little trivia, the plane needed to be refuled shortly after take off because during take off the plane would leak fuel out because the metal hadn't expanded and closed the gaps yet.

[Matra et Alpine]

pwned by satelites and unmanned recon vehicles/aircraft

Not really
Satellites can take days to get into position and recon vehicles are still flying low enough to be identified.
Only the the SR-71 gave the chance to quickly deploy ( within a matter of hours ) a side-view imaging platform that flew high enough and fast enough for little chance of the opponent hiding or moving things
It's still a gap, but companies like Northrop are working to fill it with high(ish) speed, LONG duration VERY high soaring unmanned platforms.

BTW, for all the other SR-71 freaks the FULL flight manual ( well except for the classified ECM pages ) are at .... www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual

[coolieman1220]

looks amazing. awesome jet. i need to go check out the one on the USS Intrepid here in NYC. can anyone tell me what that LARSE thing is?

[R33GTR]

Truly amazing peice of engineering!

Great pictures!

[Dan Flynn]

A straight-up badass plane! Along with the B-52 and the A-10 "Warthog", the Blackbird ranks as my favorite U.S. military jets.

[Matra et Alpine]

looks amazing. awesome jet. i need to go check out the one on the USS Intrepid here in NYC. can anyone tell me what that LARSE thing is?

It was a test of a Linear Aerospike engine.
These are similar to current rocket engines but instead of a bell shaped nozle surrounding the rocket exit to direc tnad control force, they have spike that runs up the centre of the exhaust thrust.

http://www1.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Ph...SRE/index.html

The NASA site is excellent source on all their work ( where Matt's getting all his stuff )

I saw the AD-1 in the Smithsonian storage at the Garber site. Weird. Someone had identified that it didn't really matter if you swept a wing forward or back for take-off/fast flight. So they theorised that you coudl just pivot the wing with one wing forward one back thus GREALY reducing the load, engineering and weight for variable geometry wing. http://www1.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/AD-1/index.html Seemingly they forgot that durign turns the forward and backward wings behanve TOTALLY differently makign it a nightmare to fly I hear that the Garber facility has now had lots of it's planes ( 28 ACRES ) of them moved elsewhere

[Birdman]

What? No A-12 or YF-12? If your going with the SR-71, you might as well show the rest.

Also, this plane had a dedicated tanker force since it ran diffrent fuel to the rest of the airforce. Before take-off, the oil had to be warmed since it froze at normal tempreatures.

[nopassn]

What? No A-12 or YF-12? If your going with the SR-71, you might as well show the rest.

Also, this plane had a dedicated tanker force since it ran diffrent fuel to the rest of the airforce. Before take-off, the oil had to be warmed since it froze at normal tempreatures.

I'm getting there... got the YF-12 on deck, don't have any of the A-12 though, sorry

[Birdman]

I'm getting there... got the YF-12 on deck, don't have any of the A-12 though, sorry

Thats fine. They're practically the same airframe with minor changes.