SR-71 Disintegrates Around Pilot During Flight Test (in 1966)

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/sr-71_break-up.htm

by frisco • 17 years ago

126 34 17 years ago

jbyers• 17 years ago

... in 1966.

Perhaps there should be an HN rule about dating articles not from this year in their titles? That said, this is a great story.

paulgb• 17 years ago

I've noticed a number of people following the convention of putting the year in parenthesis at the end of a dated article. It would be great if everyone followed this. (Edit: just noticed this article follows the convention; I assume that the title was edited after your comment)

jwilliams• 17 years ago

The SR-71 was an amazing piece of engineering.

The panels actually didn't line up - as they expanded when it got warm. So basically at take off the aerodynamics of the plane were shot - you had to fly for a bit for it to hit normal performance (it also meant it literally leaked until it got hot enough and sealed).

g2petter• 17 years ago

Which is why they took off with a minimum of fuel, flew around to heat up, and then refueled in mid-air.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

Amazing story.

Read the story carefully. Note the incredible details of what that aircraft could do. Now read this line again:

By far, the most memorable flight occurred on Jan. 25, 1966.

This was more than four decades ago. Can you imagine what they're doing today? In some ways, it makes me angry, because I suspect that the military solved some engineering challenges decades ago that scientists are still wrestling with today.

rudyfink• 17 years ago

If you like that sentiment, you will probably like Burt Rutan's talk at Ted ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/burt_rutan_sees_the_futur... ). The theme is a lack of progress in aerospace and how to resolve it.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

Seconded. That's one of my favorite TED talks.

amichail• 17 years ago

The F-22 is pretty cool. Total overkill actually.

Rod5• 17 years ago

I am particularly amazed by the F-22 avionics. More info on this at: http://www.f22fighter.com/avionics.htm

An excerpt:

"The F-22's avionics and software system is the most advanced ever integrated into an aircraft. It is the first aircraft to use integrated avionics, where the radar, weapons management system and electronic warfare system work as one, giving the pilot unprecedented situation awareness."

katz• 17 years ago

That is true - it is the same with space. They put a man on the moon 40 odd years ago and now they are still struggling to launch a shuttle without it blowing up.

andyn• 17 years ago

The moon trips were single shot with the sole purpose of putting someone on the moon before the Russians. Additionally, only a tiny part of the rocket had to re-enter the atmosphere to return the crew.

This link http://www.metafilter.com/48654/Jan-28-1986#1189388 perhaps explains what's wrong with the shuttle better than I could.

Kaizyn• 17 years ago

They've likely not exceeded the SR-71 by very much since then. The last several decades have seen the trend where costs are more frequently taken into account when deciding whether or not to pursue a line of scientific research. This is akin to the new direction the lazy chip makers have taken with multicore-multichip instead of continuing to work at improving the individual chips as much.

atlbeer• 17 years ago

More than 40 years ago.. This was some of the simulator technology they were using

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird#Flight_simulato...

The Link Simulator Company's SR-71 Flight Simulator was developed during 1963 – 1965 under a deep "black" security blanket because it and the team Link assigned to it were given access to CIA OXCART and USAF R-12 / SR-71 clearances, the complete list of names of classified vendors supplying parts and software that had to be simulated, the total aircraft performance envelope data and a government-produced satellite photo montage of almost the entire continental United States to provide optical imagery for the RSO's portion of the Flight Simulator. This later capability was mounted on a separate, large, rectangular glass plate (approximately 6 feet (1.8 m) by 12 feet (3.7 m) in size) over which moved an optical sighting head that traveled at the scaled speed and direction of the Blackbird during its simulated flight. Realistic and accurate images were then displayed in the Optical View Sight and SLR RCD (Radar Correlator Display) in the RSO cockpit. Imagery was not provided to the pilot's simulator, which like the RSO simulator, had translucent window panels with varying degrees of lighting to change a simulated flight from daylight to night flying conditions

jrockway• 17 years ago

This was more than four decades ago. Can you imagine what they're doing today?

The world is a strange place.

30 years ago, you could fly from New York to Paris in 3.5 hours (Concorde). Now it takes more than 7. You'd think technology would always move forward, but apparently that's not the case. If something is good enough, that might be good enough forever. Depressing.

fnazeeri• 17 years ago

Awesome! I loved the SR-71 as a kid and have been wondering what the replacement (Aurora) can do. I'm sure my son (now 3) will be fascinated!

comatose_kid• 17 years ago

From the SR-71 wikipedia entry:

"A defensive feature of the aircraft was its high speed and operating altitude, whereby, if a surface-to-air missile launch were detected, standard evasive action was simply to accelerate."

pieterbreed4• 17 years ago

There is a rumor going around in the South African Air Force that the South Africans with the help of the Israeli Air Force (who had big ties in the bad old days) figured out a way to shoot the SR71s down. It had to do with a technique called storm-climbing (which was novelized by Wilbur Smith in 'Eagle in the Sky') where a normal fighter aircraft would go full-tilt with maximum weight in a downward trajectory, flatten out the dive, dump excess weight, and start climbing vertically. This way the pilots would get to an altitude where the missiles could get a successful lock, which in this case was far higher than the 'normal' ceiling for these aircraft. From this height they could then fire off the missiles. I'm not at all sure if they ever attempted it, but I'm pretty sure they didn't succeed. Still in interesting thing to hear :)

Rod5• 17 years ago

That storm-climbing maneuver sounds really cool!!! Do you have more detailed info on that? Other than Wilbur Smith's novel, that is.

It reminds me of that classical optimal control problem in the 1960s: the U.S. Air Force wanted to find the fastest climb for its F-4 Phantoms (so they could reach their operational ceiling ASAP to intercept Soviet bombers). The optimal path was counter-intuitive: first climb, then dive, reach supersonic, climb again. Sounds crazy, but they could reduce the climbing time dramatically that way!

z3032• 17 years ago

The SR-71 used something similar to go supersonic,

'After take off and the top up the Blackbird will perform a manoeuvre called the Dipsy Doodle, here it passes mach 1 by a climb to 33,000ft followed by a sharp dive to allow the aircraft to traverse high drag transonic range without using a lot of fuel. The aircraft will then climb to at least 60,000 ft.'

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_blackbird.html

z3032• 17 years ago

The biggest problem I see with intercepting a SR-71, is not getting another plane up to the same sort of altitude but getting the plane in the right piece of the sky, taking the wikipedia stats as an example, Mach 3.2 (2,200+ mph, 3,530+ km/h,1900 knots+) at 80,000 ft (24,000 m), if your interceptor take 2 minutes to get up to 80,000 ft, even doing some sort of zoom climb your aiming at a point 73 miles in front of the SR-71 position at take off, and I would expect the real world time to be longer from detection to interceptor at altitude. So you could only do it with a large radar network to track the SR-71 plus airbase in front of the current flightpath.

Then even if you did launch a missile it would not have an easy job of hitting the target

froo• 17 years ago

Simply awe inspiring. Bookmarked for sure.

I've recently started assembling an SR-71 kit (with an f-117 to go) because I've always wanted the models sitting on my bookshelf.

cdr• 17 years ago

This has been posted regularly to Digg, Reddit, etc for years. Guess it's HN's turn - though I'm surprised it hasn't come up already.

brandnewlow• 17 years ago

ahem

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133282

hussong• 17 years ago

Thanks for digging, I knew I had seen this before. Amazing story anyway.

mugwunk• 17 years ago

I always thought it would be safer to stick the pilot in the center of the plane, using periscopes or (now) video to fly. But I guess you're more likely to be thrown free of a disintegrating plane if you're in the usual pilot position.

pavel_lishin• 17 years ago

Like the pilot said, though, it was only incredible luck that left him alive. I doubt that your odds are significantly improved or decreased by where you're sitting if your supersonic airplane falls apart around you.

chadgeidel• 17 years ago

Also take a look at "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed" by Ben Rich (manager at Lockheed after Kelly Johnson). Despite the title, he also talks extensively about the U2 and SR-71 projects - Amazing pieces of engineering all.

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...

SR-71 Disintegrates Around Pilot During Flight Test (in 1966)

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