SR-71 Blackbird Flight Manual | Hacker News Reader

SR-71 Blackbird Flight Manual

sr-71.org

68 pointsibejoeb23 comments

This plane never ceases to astound me.

It was so fast the standard evasive maneuver when it was shot at was simply to increase speed. There was just no missile that could catch it.

During flight, the plane would heat up so much from friction that it would expand significantly–as a consequence, the plane leaked fuel on the ground, since the fuel transfer system only fit together right at 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Truly a marvel of human ingenuity.

I've been reading "Skunk Works" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003), which talks about the development of the SR-71 and other planes (such as the U-2 and the stealth bomber) at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility. It's a good read. I think it may have been suggested by another HNer.

I read this a few years ago. Quite a few years ago, come to think of it. It makes you wistful for those time when such a small group of skilled engineers came together to make incredible, physical things.

What we all do with code doesn't even come close.

It really puts things into perspective. We get excited when we come up with a different way to display a form and these guys were building planes that traveled at Mach 3 at 80,000 feet nearly 50 years ago. The amount of technical problems you have to solve to get such a plane into the air is simply staggering. Unbelievable.

My favorite section is emergency procedures which contains gems like this:

"If both the A and B hydraulic systems fail as indicated by illumination of the A HYD and B HYD warning lights and confirmed by loss of A and B hydraulic pressure and deteriorating control effectiveness:

1. Eject"

Hm, frustration, none of the pages work for me, they come up with a blank image.

It uses PHP to serve the images from a database - e.g. http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/3/display.php?file=3-8.... Going to the image manually shows this:

The Database Must Be Down.

WARNING: This discovery cost me about 3 days of productivity a couple of years ago ;)

Saw this the other week (I think its been posted to hacker news before). It's actually surprisingly easy to understand, even for private barely-trained pilot's.

I'm sure I wasn't the first to see it, but I posted it last Thursday. I'm not surprised it didn't get any traction, though; the Dow was busy eating its own head around the same time.

I'm pretty sure there's a section in here about nose-dives...

Caught part of a MILT channel show from 2002 about the SR-71 / Lockheed Skunkworks.

One thing I hadn't seen before was this... an unmanned drone, launched from the back of an SR-71, at Mach 2. What a country!

http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/d-21.php

you should watch James May(top gear)as he goes to the edge of space in one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6cZLfK4Zjk

That's a U-2, not an SR-71

thank you for correcting. I thought they were from the same 'family'. too late to delete my comment.

Both come from Lockheed's 'Skunk Works' and they applied a lot of what they learned on the U2 to the SR71, so you're not so far off.

I'll just leave this link here...

http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the-thrill-of-flying-the-sr+71-bl...

A better excerpt of the "king of speed" story from Sled Driver stuffed into the middle of that article is here:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.aviation.stories/browse_t...

Now I really want to watch The Right Stuff again.

It's on Netflix streaming. I'd say you owe me 3 hours, but I liked it.

I take it the parts that remain classified contain the max speed and altitude?

Hoping to find a model for X-Plane to try this out on...

X-Plane comes with the SR-71 by default.

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