More SR71 coolness

Dip Dungles

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Amazing info in this thread. The pilots who rocked these amazing machines have balls the size of watermelons. The drag marks could be seen from space.
 

James Snover

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I had to watch it twice to even get close to understand, and still don’t.
Ain't it, though? Tell me any other engine you know of with a 90:1 compression ratio. And the concomitant 90:1 expansion ratio? This thing, by by being fed it's own shockwaves, was, literally, supercharging itself as a consequence of its own speed! How freaking awesome is that?
 

James Snover

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Beyond cool. It is unreal what those engineers accomplished - inventing technology as the project progressed. What an exciting time it must have been for them.
Check out the book "Skunkworks," by Ben Rich. Rich was Kelly Johnson's right-hand man at Lockheed, and he was the the man who thought up the inlets for the Blackbird. The book is his autobiography and deals with several projects he worked on while at Lockheed. Including more info on the development and deployment of the Blackbird than one could have ever hoped for. He goes into the Blackbird at length.
 

Silverstrike

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Ain't it, though? Tell me any other engine you know of with a 90:1 compression ratio. And the concomitant 90:1 expansion ratio? This thing, by by being fed it's own shockwaves, was, literally, supercharging itself as a consequence of its own speed! How freaking awesome is that?


And just think the J-58 was a naval engine to start out with for a Mach 3 carrier born interceptor to intercept Soviet bombers as far away from the carrier as possible (1958). It got cancelled and then reborn as the F-111B project, then that was axed and the F-14 was born in 1970 as the long range engagement interceptor the US Navy wanted to start with.
 

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