The A-12 and the SR-71 were a completely different design from anything else before it—and everything after, as time has demonstrated. At the time, many of the technologies needed to make these airplanes were considered "impossible." And yet, thanks to Kelly Johnson and the amazing team at engineers and scientists at Lockheed's Skunk Works, they were invented from scratch—in twenty months.
According to Lockheed Martin's official account, Kelly Johnson—the engineer who made the A-12 Oxcart and the SR-71 Blackbird—"everything had to be invented. Everything. " From the The Pratt & Whitney J58 engines—a technological feat still unsurpassed by today's mass manufactured airplanes—to its titanium skin—capable of surviving temperatures from 315C (600F) to more than 482C (900F)—and composite materials. Its landing gear, for example, is"the largest piece of titanium ever forged in the world." Ironically, the United States did not have enough titanium to build these airplanes, so they have to buy it from the Soviet Union. Imagine that: Buying the only material in the world that could make an spy plane from the country you wanted to spy.
We don't build those anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd Russian spacecraft fly us up to OUR space station.
DeleteIt's all part of "fundamentally transforming America".
@LL: We took a dune buggy to the moon!
DeleteNot any more.
Thanks, barry.
Anon, there's the problem. Taking a dune buggy to the Moon didn't make Muslims feel good about themselves. We didn't haul an angry female negro Muslim astronaut to the Moon with us as a token chair filler. That's Islamophobic, sexist and racist.
DeleteWe have one down here in the Tucson Pima air museum. You can walk all around it. It is S L E E K!
ReplyDeleteIf I'm ever in Tucson, I'll definitely go see it.
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