Posted on 08/04/2014 2:02:47 PM PDT by Carbonsteel
ARLINGTON, Va. — On a September day in 1974, Capt. Harold "Buck" Adams set the world speed record in the U.S. military's SR-71 Blackbird aircraft. At the controls of the twin-engine supersonic plane, Adams flew from London to Los Angeles in a blistering 3 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds.
The Cold War was in full swing, and "there was a need for an airplane that could penetrate Soviet airspace with impunity," Adams, a retired brigadier general for the U.S. Air Force, told an audience July 18 here at a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) expo showcasing the Pentagon's latest electronic technologies. "It was a technology marvel," Adams said.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
What happened??!!
Diversity.
What happened? The military industrial complex got greedy. They get awarded contracts for aircraft and weapons concepts that they require 20 years of fat paychecks in order to produce a flawed product.
And then there was Aurora
Nah, military got greedy.
Every weapon systems has to be ultra-high tech electronics, “integrated”, camouflaged, high speed, low altitude, deep-diving, smart bulleted, uni-sex, VTOL, etc. etc.
apparently, we can no longer rely on quantity to win a war, so we have to swing to the other side - the ultimate, bad-ass weapons, which, of course, the taxpayer can no longer afford, or can only afford a dwindling few.
Love the blackbird.
What a great platform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wibdPc3LvrQ
Zoom Zoom Zoom
At the controls of the twin-engine supersonic plane, Adams flew from London to Los Angeles in a blistering 3 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds.
I wonder if he flew a polar route, because going west to east is usually faster due to winds.
They dumped their slide-rules.
Also the only jet to use two Buick Wildcat car engines for the start-cart.
Has Aurora been proven to exist or is it still rumor?
And then there was Aurora
Doughnuts on a rope.
The constituents demand $900 hammers so that the ordnance men don’t blow half the ship up using an iron hammer to tap out a fuse.
Defense contractors work within the law.
We test the crap out of it to ensure Johnny does not get killed.
The military industrial complex got greedy.
The complex was corrupt long before the 1960’s due to politics.
Strides in aeronautics have slowed due to physics. These days we make better advancements in avionics and materials that aren’t as easily seen.
An often-told SR-71 pilot’s story:
“One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. ‘Ninety knots,’ ATC replied.
A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. ‘One-twenty on the ground,’ was the reply.
To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. ‘Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,’ ATC responded.
The situation was too ripe...
I heard the click of Walter’s mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace.
In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ‘Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.’ We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.
“3 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds.”
Wonder what he could have done it in. You can bet that wasn’t max.
One of my favorites was ol Chuck Yeager.
He had a cockpit fire, in a test plane, he calmly radioed it in, and said It was not a real issue, but the smoke in the cockpit was obscuring the view of Mt Baldy that we all love so well....
Real Brass
The SR-71 was a product of the genius of Kelly Johnson and his “Skunk Works”. It was designed in pretty much in the pre-computer days with slide rules and solid engineering. Ditto for the Saturn V moon rocket.
Jimmy Carter, et. al.
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