Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 | Hacker News Reader

Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18

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270 pointsmike_esspe27 comments

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Non-Google-Books versions:

Test pilot Bill Weaver's personal account (exact same text) -- http://www.barthworks.com/aviation/sr71breakup.htm

Very similar 3rd-person account -- http://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/sr-71a_952_accident.ht...

A little more mundane and uplifting SR-71 story about a ground speed check.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.avia...

Here's a similar story, but about "What was the slowest you ever flew in the Blackbird?"

http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/speed-is-life.html

I think I've read that excerpt about 5 times and I always love it!

Thanks for sharing

You gotta love SR-71 stories.

"As an outgrowth of Bill Weaver's inability to see out of his faceplate from the ice buildup, futre SR-71 ejection seats incorporated a battery pack that continued to keep the glass faceplate heated during the frigid descent."

The amount of engineering and refinement that goes into these safety systems really amazes me. They learn from everything in aviation and put it to good use.

Then again, they had a brilliantly working "don't panic" mechanism built in :-)

I think the technical term would be "super-chromatic peril sensitive faceplate."

Some other interesting moments of aeronautical derring-do:

Imagine piloting an unpowered aircraft with no wings which could best be described as a "flying bathtub" and by "flying" what is meant is "falling". This is the M2-F{1,2,3}, designed to test lifting body aerodynamics and unpowered landings, much of this research helped in the design of the shuttle orbiter. But in 1967 pilot Bruce Peterson was involved in a spectacular crash that was later used in the opening of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, he survived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvGJhJINlc

Also consider the X-15. Unlike the SR-71 the X-15 didn't cruise around at high speeds it just accelerated to very high speeds using a rocket engine and then glided. These aircraft, dropped off the wing of a B-52, these aircraft would eventually travel up to nearly mach 7 and over 100 km altitude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Also it's worth considering that the Space Ship One rocket powered sub-orbital space plane gets up to around mach 3 on ascent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne

Or, consider the Apollo 10 spacecraft, which reentered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of nearly 40,000 kph after returning from the moon (over ten times the highest recorded speed of the SR-71).

Amazing reading this. Especially his thought process. After he comes out of "blackout", he goes right to work running a checklist and taking inventory of his assets. The part about the seatbelts, in this context, is a priceless example of how to keep your cool. Sometimes you don't want to know or need to know everything.

I own a print copy of this book, it's good stuff.

I picked it up soon after reading Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed [1], an incredible book which recounts development of the U2, SR-71 and F-117A.

1: http://amzn.com/0316743003

Skunk Works is a great read. It's enlightening how advanced these guys were in the 60's, I tend to think of the 80s and 90s as being the time when we raced forward technically but it was probably the 60s and 70s were the fastest pace.

Absolutely, I found it incredibly inspirational to read about those guys riding the bleeding edge of technology - inventing and adapting as they went along.

They basically built something from the future.

With a native grasp of aero / astro, can't imagine they had a lot of CAD or simulation horsepower. I have to think its a great story of fundament mastery.

As Ben Rich describes in Skunk Works, the SR-71 was designed using slide rules and drafting instruments and tested in a wind tunnel that could only run at night because of how much energy it used. IIRC it was the early stealth stuff (an SR-71 launched drone and then the F-117) that ushered in the use of computers.

Also amazing, was the materials engineering. SR71 ushered in the use of widespread Titanium in the airframe, which was needed to stand up to the heat (friction) at Mach 3+. Because of the severe heat-cycling, the engineers ultimately figured out an unorthodox solution to manage thermal expansion:

The fuselage panels were manufactured to fit only loosely on the ground. Proper alignment was only achieved when the airframe heated up and expanded several inches. Because of this, and the lack of a fuel sealing system that could handle the thermal expansion of the airframe at extreme temperatures, the aircraft would leak JP-7 jet fuel on the runway. At the beginning of each mission, the aircraft would make a short sprint after takeoff to warm up the airframe, then refuel before heading off to its destination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Airfra...

He mentions that it was his "first ever parachute landing", but I can't imagine a SR-71 test pilot wouldn't have been trained in parachute landings. Any idea why?

I imagine he's simply stating that this was his first-ever ejection-seat landing. It's not like they kick you out of a plane in a chair with a chute attached to it to train.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvB5AE6HlE describes "Aircraft Ejection & Parachute Training, ADC Life Support Training School, 1968, US Air Force" - so we can infer that since ejection and parachute training did happen in times contemporary to this account, and since test pilot is a high risk activity (especially back in the time when test pilots were actually pushing the flight envelope instead of just validating numerical models), the author did receive that training.

But even for test pilots, ejection is a rare and traumatic event : finding oneself landing with no injury at all after a high speed ejection is very lucky - the design of the B-58, XB-70, F-111, Space Shuttle and some of the B-1A prototypes with an escape crew capsule is a consequence of that, though it seems that the weight and space tradeoff has fallen out of favor. Apart from speed, the mere impact of the charge that propels the seat is enough to cause spinal injury, even if the pilot managed to get his spine in perfectly upright position before ejecting.

Actually, I think today's procedure is that a pilot is retired after two ejections because of the induced trauma.

Anyone who has flown in a SR-71 is certified to have brass balls.

This is interesting for so many reasons, very good book (both in stories and writing). The most useful bit probably when he explained why the suit inflated, exactly like the way Baumgartner's balloon inflated earlier today when it reached the upper atmosphere.

Here's a video of another high speed Blackbird breakup, from a D-21 drone release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyC2urCl_4

The debris just keeps on going because of the huge momentum and thin air at those speeds and altitudes.

If you like this sort of books, don't forget to check "X-15; extending the frontier of flight": http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/aero_x15_detail.html

This appears to be the best book ever written. oO;

The "skunkworks" is one of my favorite concepts. Look at what they were able to achieve. Truly amazing.

An amazing story.

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