The SR-71's predecessor used cesium-laced fuel to create radar-absorbing exhaust
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Come on, you lazy reporter! Go find a jet engine and some cesium and a radar reflectometer and make a graph of reflectance vs. cesium content.
Presumably, some engineer at Lockheed in the late 50s got exactly that assignment, with a budget. There would be a notebook with a table of numbers and a hand-drawn graph. Those would be amazing to see.
For Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55kgyApYrY
http://w140.com/tekwiki/images/b/bd/Tek_7854_design_team.pdf
Would be cool to see some old notebooks from Bell Labs tho like Ritchie or Thompson. I just found some old AT&T training manuals on Perl, TCP/IP, Bash, C and Unix internals, they are really cool.
It is... from another time. Both the quality of the engineering and the quality of the documentation simply don't happen anymore outside of very narrow niches.
And then you look at the Death Star now, and their core competency is lobbying. Priorities certainly have changed.
[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-and-operations-in...
There are no organizations left in the world like pre divesture AT&T - While I think divestiture was a net gain, it's clear that some things were not positive, and some stuff was irrevocably lost.
I've only read about the AT&T divestiture in the "pro-antitrust" light; that AT&T owned all the telephones, you weren't allowed to connect your own, etc etc. Where can I read other angles to this story?
Thinking about it, I wonder if this isn't a similar story to Eternal September.
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - National Service in War and Peace (1925-1975)
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Switching Technology (1925-1975)
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Physical Sciences (1925-1980)
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Communications Sciences (1925-1980)
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Electronics Technology (1925-1975)
The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Transmission Technology (1925-1980)
There are two editions of Engineering and Operations in the Bell System one from 1983 and one from 1977.
Another one worth looking at is Transmission Systems for Communications.
For more information about divestiture, read Heritage and Destiny - https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-Destiny-Reflections-System-T...
At least some of these are available as PDF's from archive.org
Another thing looking at is back BSTJ articles: https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bstj-a...
AT&T was anti-competitive, but it also spent much money on the public good, its a mixed bag - we did lose something with divestiture.
Wasn't Bell Labs a narrow niche at the time?
Also at (previews faster): https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_westernEleEngineeringa...
A lot of these otherwise sensible warfare blogs are getting heavily into this. I don't understand it.
But clearly it attracts a big audience and they've always been a niche blog topic so I guess they like the attention.
In the absence of any positive evidence for its existence, I don't believe there is extra-terrestrial life. But I haven't seen any logical explanation for some of the widely observed phenomena, either. I usually assume it involves secret government projects.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-th...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't astronomy the scientific study of celestial objects; and astrophysics is the branch of astronomy concerned with the physical nature of those celestial objects.
Why would either of those be the right consultants for UFOs, which are decidedly not celestial objects.
One would hope fighter pilots have some faculty in said skills!
I just get a lot of noise and nothing really makes sense, so I just treat it as entertainint Sci-Fi.
In the 90s it was stealth aircraft, in the 80s it was Tomahawk missiles, 50s any of a dozen airborne platforms.
"Plasma Diagnostics in Supersonic Flow Containing Cesium and Potassium" [1] Burn Cs in a rocket engine, check for absorption up to 70 GHz (or cps, in those days). Looks like fun work.
[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4323385 (paywalled)
But the ultimate SR-71 book would be Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...
Awarding the JSF to Lockheed two decades earlier had similar connotations. Boeing could maintain its aviation capabilities and expertise on the back of its commercial business. For Lockheed, losing the JSF would have meant the end of its aviation unit which the USAF deemed critical for national security.
Source: Dad was part of the YF-23 program at northrop and lost his gog when the project was shitcanned. yes, still bitter almost 30 years later.
Seems they're museums pieces now and look relatively unscathed. [0][1]
> The two YF-23 prototypes were museum exhibits as of 2010
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...
> The two YF-23 prototypes were museum exhibits
The 22's were lost, the 23's were museum exhibits, not the same planes.
It seems the F22 was basically picked on the promise to make as many components in as many separate states as possible, in order to ensure every politician on the hill brought into it.
And the idea of servicing different parts of the F35 in different buying countries is another logistical masterstroke, not! Oh my god, servicing F35 engines in Turkey just when Turkey starts to dance with Russia, what were we thinking?
Right now we're telling Turkey you can't have the F35 because you've just brought the S400 SAMs from Russia, but we've already invested in servicing the F35 engines there...
Also, even if they didn't sell the F-35 to Turkey but still serviced the engines there that would make logical sense. The reason the US is paranoid about the S-400 is because they think radar data about the F-35 and other NATO aircraft will be fed back to Russia[4]. That concern obviously doesn't apply to a stand-alone F-35 engine sitting on the ground.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
2. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/07/turkish-suppliers...
3. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/16/trump-turkey-...
4. https://news.usni.org/2019/07/15/f-35-program-leadership-cha...
Over 900 parts in the F35 were made by Turkish companies, and they have to now be re-sourced.
Now, I don't think the F35 operators want F35 engines sitting around in a country now receiving Russian military advisers. The idea that the engine isn't classified is crazy.
The parts we keep secret are the stealth coatings which we do domestically and the sensor fusion which is mostly software based
Can they just fly them out of the US at this point? No idea, but it's interesting to see what'll happen with that.
Just because Russia has S-400 advisors in Turkey doesn't mean they get to walk around wherever they want, including wherever the F-35's engines are serviced.
The concern was specifically that they'd have access to detailed radar data on the F-35, which they'd have access to in their roles as advisors for the S-400 missile system.
It was never built, let alone flown.
Today they sell for $200-$350 used.
Due losing track of the first copy, buying a second one (when they were available new), then finding the first copy, I have two copies and high hopes of them funding my retirement..
I speculate this worked by the highly reactive cesium ionizing the air. Similar things have been done with doping rocket fuels with metals to stimulate lightning strikes.
Presumably most of the cesium would end up reacted very quickly, I don't know what the products would be but plenty of obvious candidates like cesium carbonate appear to be non-toxic.
Off the top of my head: They are adding Cesium ("screw the environment, I have to escape my pursuer") to the engine in order to leave a plasmonic plume. The plasma, which occurs because the electrons in Cesium are stripped off in the heat of the engine, absorbs microwaves (ie, radar) because of the expected cyclotron physics of a free-electron gas.
However as an electronic countermeasure, I do not see the point. The plasmonic plume will absorb the microwaves where the rest of the plane will continue to reflect it. To my thinking, the is exactly what you do not want to do: You've reduced the microwave signal where the plane is not present, and done nothing to the signal where the plane is present. So you've improved the signal-to-noise for the enemy, which are providing guidance for anti-aircraft missiles.
Considering how many years this program went on for, my thinking must be wrong. Maybe anti-aircraft missiles of the era did not intercept from oblique angles (which takes serious computation and sensors) but could only hit from behind (where the plume would attenuate a signal)?
There's a bit of reading between the lines that needs to be done here though. The aircraft is already shaped to deflect radar waves from a tail or nose on aspect but the part that's very hard to 'stealth' is the insides of the engines, especially from the rear aspect. Turbine blades and all the other geometry inside tends to act like a radar disco-ball and leaves even many modern aircraft vulnerable. By making the exhaust radar absorbent you fix this issue.
JP-7 has a very high ignition temperature (it was actually used as a coolant/heat sink for the rest of the aircraft), so TEB combusting once it hit the air is used to light the engines.
SR-71s only had a limited amount of TEB to use each flight. I believe it was 13 shots per engine. TEB was used each time the engines were lit and also when afterburners were lit. While the SR-71's routes were built around refueling, the number of TEB shots remaining were the true limiting factor of the SR-71's flight time.
I always assumed afterburners just meant opening the throttle up but there must be more to it
No, as the name implies it's literally pouring in fuel after the turbine, in the exhaust. The exhaust is hot, yes, but cooler than the combustion chambers (which reside in between the turbine and compressor). So if you have some special fuel that's very hard to ignite then maybe you need some help to get the afterburning started.
>Infrared guidance systems in heat-seeking missiles are designed to track strong sources of infrared radiation
>Directional IRCM, or DIRCM, allows for a countermeasures laser to be targeted directly at an incoming IR threat.
Some Google around NYTimes would probably turn up the details.
People who think like this make want to cry. Those who can see the consequences and choose to overlook them.
is a great alternative HN tagline
A decision I'm sure the Soviet Union would quickly come to regret.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/...
Secrets in the Sky: The Untold Story of Skunk Works: https://www.history.com/specials/secrets-in-the-sky-the-unto...
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
that whole site is full of awesome accounts of his adventures out west.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdxpqqsHl8
Frank Murray's talk is full of great facts, insight, yarns and stuff. Still as sharp as a tack.
There are lots of other interviews with A12 and SR71 and other interesting planes on youtube.
Be warned: an HNer could lose days browsing there ;)
Same line of thinking that results in depleted uranium tank shells.
There's some flight safety concerns that have delayed it, but it's still a work in progress.
I think that the 737-Max issue will put so much more spotlight and brakes on anything that seems remotely risky, that the alternative fuels program (which was already struggling as you note) is unlikely to make serious near-term progress.
Almost tangentially, I believe that we have a viable fuel technically (G100UL) that is likely to be (or be the template for) the fuel ultimately selected, albeit possibly a decade or more in the future.
There's also some news at https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas/ , but nothing substantial..
Yeah, since neither was particularly toxic, and both offered significant performance gains over the alternatives. (Uranium is extremely dense, self-sharpens on impact instead of mushrooming, and catches fire after penetration giving you an incendiary payload for free. Supposedly, nothing else comes close for tank rounds)
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp186.pdf
The problem here is that armor piercing rounds need to be made of heavy metals in order to work and heavy metals are generally toxic. Even lead, which old fashioned bullets and shells are made of is toxic.
Equally funny is where someone thought that it would be a wonderful idea to burn mercaptans in a rocket, which wasn't quite as toxic, but caused the test site to become a no-go zone just from the unbearable stench.