Behind the stick of the SR-71
sbnation.com
sbnation.com
This is what makes the famous "speed check" story about the SR-71 so effective (http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912...).
There is no eye contact or body language possible between the pilot and the communicator in the SR-71. What makes that story so perfect is not just the speed aspect, not just the smugness of the other planes, but the interpersonal relationship between the pilot and his crew member. It's just perfect story-telling.
(In case you're wondering, I know this because I was wiki-ing around after my iphone's accelerometer went nuts to figure out how state-of-the-art gyroscopes worked. Turns out that there's a special type of gyroscope, the Ring Laser Gyroscope, which uses relativity and interference patterns to achieve ~0 drift. RLGs were developed for ICBMs.)
Nevertheless, here we are. And here, most importantly, at least from my perspective, I am. And - or perhaps, "and so" - I enjoyed this one.
The YF-12 was to kill however.
Just as one can use a butcher knife for its intended purpose or use it to kill, it's possible to design military equipment to "kill people and break things" without necessarily meaning to wage aggressive warfare.
It's true that the military tools are often misused, but that wouldn't change in the real world by simply not having them; pacifist countries are sheep in a field full of wolves.
Just look at Ukraine, and then compare to nations that e.g. gave up nuclear weapons and then suffered "regime change". The list includes Libya, parts of Ukraine, and effectively Iraq (who were very close to a nuke circa 1991). There's a reason Iran and North Korea want the bomb, and that reason is because the deterrent value is real, not imagined.
Rather it's the same as an underlying principle behind the Second Amendment push (no one cares for my defense more than I care for my defense), scaled up to the geopolitical level.
So just as I think it's possible to appreciate the craftsmanship and design that goes into a well-made katana even if you don't intend to run the sword through someone's guts, I think it's possible to appreciate at a technical level some of the technology used in military gear without feeling like it means you support war. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12First thing I'll say: I'm not sure I've reached a conclusion regarding that statement or not.
But I've been leaning rather more strongly to the idea that things can be classified as beneficial vs. otherwise. Though sometimes counterintuitively.
One of the more interesting hypotheticals I've run across recently is the Paperclip Maximizer example: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
The paperclip maximizer is the canonical thought experiment showing how an artificial general intelligence, even one designed competently and without malice, could ultimately destroy humanity. The thought experiment assumes an AI stable structure of goals or values, and shows that AIs with apparently innocuous values could pose an existential threat.
The idea: any simple-minded optimization behavior which doesn't take into consideration human values can, taken to the logical extreme, prove hazardous.
It was posted to HN a few years ago, though it didn't trigger much discussion at the time:
It does open some questions about how "innovative" one might want to be when developing a weapon, even for defensive uses.
It's sort of unfortunate that nuclear physics made the gains it did, when it did, as a big part of the reason the U.S. ended up making the big push for the bomb, at a time when they needed all the resources they could get put into things like logistics for shipping materiel, was because of the fear that Germany might get it first. I.e., "if someone will get the bomb, we'd better do it better they do".
I suppose the Cold War would have ensured proliferation one way or another, but WWII certainly did not help the cause of non-proliferation.
But either way, war or defense (whatever you call it) can never be a simple-minded optimized anything. It is almost the very highest level of human holistic competition. So I'm not worried about the technology (as long as we don't make it self-aware, of course), I'm worried about the people.
It's not enough to merely keep humans in the picture, but to keep healthy, undamaged humans in the picture.
Let's say, perhaps, that after a particularly costly war, the only humans left are a mixture of mentally unstable, angry, ambitious, victory-driven amputees, with intense biases imbued upon them by surviving particularly horrific and violent combat. These people, in a warped attempt to say "never again", optimize an artificially intelligent, fully automated child-rearing skinner box [1] to mold children into their own image, as the natural and perfect outcome which produces a society averse to violent warfare. The result is that every child that emerges from the skinner box is an angry, warped sociopath, missing limbs, who rationalizes even trivial behavior with an arbitrary moral high ground of extreme polar ideology.
But wait... aren't humans... technically classifiable as self-assembling intelligent constructs, spewed forth from the bald nothingness of space and time by mere coincidence? What if WE are the beast we fear?
Oh... oh god.
That's helpful but not sufficient.
• It doesn't address the criticality of appropriate feedback controls and limits. People and algorithms both make bad decisions.
• A given group of humans might not act in the best interests of all humans, or even a specified larger group, or even themselves.
Re: how innovative we want to be even with defensive weapons. Body armor is generally far less dangerous than an RPG or assault rifle. But defensive technologies such as antibiotics can, if misused, lead to larger downstream threats (through antibiotic resistance). The areas of unintended consequences, moral and morale hazard, and the like, make for fascinating study.
Re: the bomb. Yes, the Germans and Japanese were both conducting nuclear research (though I believe the Japanese project was limited and/or curtailed). Another interesting speculation I've seen is of what might have happened had the US not used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it's possible that the true horrors of the weapon wouldn't have been realized and that the next military action (the Korean War) might have gone nuclear.
The places where I've been spending time looking at things are a bit more nuanced though: sustainability in light of finite resources and/or maximum flows: is saving lives really an unalloyed good? What of technology in general which might increase technological risks (simply of failure). Was the Green Revolution a good thing? Humans have been something of a paperclip maximizer, except that our paperclips are humans. In the long run even that may not work out for us. Systems need negative feedback loops.
Imo, the whole electronics (tv, computer, chip) industry advanced as much as it did due to the War Machinery.
My son is almost 2 and you can bet that I'll tell him what he needs to do to achieve this. [1]
[1] - To be a USAF pilot, your best bet is to bust your ass in high school and be both a student and an athlete and secure one of the coveted congressional endorsements to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where you must bust your ass and hope for a flight slot. Similar route for the Navy and USMC: U.S. Naval Academy.
The process to become a U.S. Army helicopter or fixed-wing pilot is a lot easier. Pursue a slot as an Aviation warrant officer. Successfully complete basic training, WOCS, and flight school. You don't need a college degree but it helps. The key is age: the doors close at around 32, so you have to start early.
(I also spent an evening at the bar w/ a class of his students. I was expecting super gung-ho jock types, but they were actually very laid back and a little bit dorky. Interesting experience for a boy raised by hippies in the Oregon woods.)
Here's a great book to read about the SR-71.
http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...
When the airport is outside town, and you have to arrive 1.5 hours before the flight takes off, taking even a large % of the flight time off doesn't make a significant dent in total travel time.
And if you're looking for more generalized "reduced pain of travel," the reality is that really comfortable seating arrangements and decent food/drink can be delivered on a sub-sonic widebody for a lot less $$ than it would cost you to travel the route on a hypothetical supersonic passenger jet.
Transpacific is probably where the difference would matter the most, assuming the supersonic jet had that kind of range (which is sort of doubtful). But it's worth noting that, even with today's jets, some really long haul routes that would significantly cut travel time for some don't make economic sense and have been eliminated (e.g. New York-Singapore).
As I said elsewhere on the thread, for most people under most circumstances, the main thing is the overall travel experience rather than the number of hours. I don't find flying business transpacific all that unpleasant--just boring. And the first class setups for some of the Asian etc. carriers who have 3-class configurations look pretty amazing though I've never experienced them first-hand. The technology and capability exists to make long-haul air travel almost arbitrarily comfortable (and connected). It's just a case of how much money a large enough segment of travelers are will to pay.
A pretty slick hack as I've ever seen.
http://www.museumofflight.org/exhibits/blackbird
I also highly recommend people book a tour for the Boeing factory in Everett (about an hour just north of Seattle) where you can see 747s, 787s, 777s, etc. being manufactured in the world's largest building (by volume).
There are about 20 SR-71s in museums (plus an SR-71 cockpit at the Museum of Flight, which you can sit in.)
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Accide... plus personal knowledge as a former Museum of Flight employee
Unfortunately, it's in kinda rough shape right now. It's been outside for years and the paint is starting to fade.
For anyone who happens to come to the Coliseum in LA for USC football game, you should check it out.
At one point you can swing a left and see a jet, which looks decent sized but not particularly special compared to planes around it, until realize that it's a full sized 707 jetliner...
I pointed to the shuttle there and said "look at that! it's a space ship!" Another visitor looked over at me and said "no that's just a...." eyes widened in sudden awareness, "I guess...I guess it is a space ship!"
My brother-in-law excitedly asked "this is a great model, where's the real thing?"
"That's the real thing, you're 5 feet from an actual, real space ship."
Mind blown, we next walked over to the actual Enola Gay...which sits not too far from an actual Concord.
It's an absolutely mind-blowing awe inspiring place.
edit BTW, the shuttle flew at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph) so fast you could see the sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes. That's Mach 22.
If the Shuttle were flying at sea level, yes. But of course it isn't. Mach number is meaningless in orbit.
(During reentry, once the atmosphere is thick enough for Mach number to be meaningful, I believe the highest readings seen are Mach 25 to 26, since the speed of sound is lower at high altitude.)
The Cosmosphere is one of my favorite places. It has the largest collection of American space hardware outside of the Smithsonian in DC, and the largest collection of Russian space hardware outside of Russia. Definitely worth a visit.
It took a while for planes to become big tubes with wings on them, with the jet engines in pods. Economics is the thing, it is down to cost per mile, that is it for passengers and freight (fresh vegetables). The era of experimentation is over. Tilt-rotors, Spruce Gooses, Harrier Jump Jets, Concordes, twin-boom P38s - history.
I've been there a couple of times. There's a path that snakes under, and the engines are about 12 feet above ground. There's a little higher path in the rear, where you can look more evenly, and you're about 8 feet behind. It's in very good shape and very impressive.
My favorite is the SR-71 that had to cut across France, was intercepted by a Mirage fighter and then left it behind in seconds :D
"The tires may skid with the brakes on at high engine thrust."
That is not a problem you have to deal with when flying a Cessna 172.
That's not a problem you'd have with other planes either because usually the wings would stall first. This is a problem because you don't get an aerodynamic sense of being near the danger zone when things go haywire.
"The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit."
So asked Wolfram about this
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+mile+per+1.6+seconds...
2250 mph (3629 kph)
Mach 2.956 at Sea level (340.3 m/s)
I couldn't figure out the magic English sentence that would get it to calculate the Mach at different altitudes.
According to that page, at 60,000 feet the speed of sound is 1062 km/h, making 3629 km/h approximately mach 3.4.
UNREAL especially for 1960 era technology.
There's also a Blackbird at Dulles, in the Udvar Hazy Air and Space annex. That one's an SR71.
The concordes are amazing too. They look sooo spindly, until you're right up close to those engines. (and hmm, both museums have concordes too. But the Seattle one lets you walk through the inside.)
As long as the weather is nice enough. We had to close down if there was either a threat to safety (lightning, ice on the stairs) or a lot of moisture getting inside the aircraft.
As a bonus, you can also walk through Eisenhower's Air Force One aircraft and see a lot of other cool stuff. Apparently in the summer they even open the 747 prototype, one of the 727s, and the Super Connie: http://www.museumofflight.org/airpark
(I used to work in the museum, and later volunteered to monitor those two aircraft. Never got to see inside the 747 though.)
> You'd fly the T-38 every day (for proficiency sake).
> As we took off from there and came back around for a pass, the right engine exploded. We had to dump gas, and set about thirteen acres of Maryland on fire as we did that. That was kind of interesting, just spewing flaming fuel and titanium pieces around.
> The SR-71 had a turning radius of about 100 mi. at that speed (above Mach 3) and altitude.
Also, during his 1st flight after the accident, Eject light went on in the back seat due to electrical issue. Because the backseater cannot see front seat, the backseater momentarily thought the pilot ejected without telling him...
"Johnson's famed "down-to-brass-tacks" management style was summed up by his motto, "Be quick, be quiet, and be on time." He ran Skunk Works by "Kelly's 14 Rules":
The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don't have the books 90 days late, and don't surprise the customer with sudden overruns.
The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.
The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don't duplicate so much inspection.
The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.
The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.
Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.
There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.
Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.
Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised."
Eh, this would only happen if they were adjusting their vector in like a wave, or their speed, right? It's not like they are shooting around the planet.
And he says England to Russia, so not following the sun. What is he talking about?
edit: reading further i'm having a real hard time believing this shit.