Aurora/SR-72/SR-91 ?

SR-72 or Darkstar...

https://youtu.be/1vWIL3PNa30

This would have been a top secret photo back in the day in the 60's.

https://thechive.com/military/r-i-p-legendary-sr-71-blackbird-pilotbria…

 I know there was some controversy reguarding Brian but there's no denying he was a real bad-ass in the air.

Godspeed Brian Shul

😳😲

Hate to go off-topic of the political BS, but I just ran across this article and thought I would share.

When you fuel up an SR-71, sitting on the ground in the hot sun, the fuel dribbles out on the tarmac. That’s not an apocryphal tale, it’s really true.

When you want to start the engines on an SR-71, you can’t use a standard airport start cart, you have to shackle each engine up to a pair of big V8 muscle car engines. Then, to get the fuel to ignite, you have to inject a special, toxic, high temperature hypergolic chemical mix similar to rocket propellant.

So you do all that, and you get the thing into the air, and you have to have a tanker waiting, just for you. You can’t take off with full tanks, and you can’t fly very far without them—or with them for that matter.

So you fill ’er up and accelerate to cruising speed. Only then do the tanks heat up enough to expand and seal up the leaks.

So you refuel—a few times—and you get to wherever you need to go—which is going to be deep inside the territory of somebody who wants you dead, because otherwise, why are you up there? And while you are flying around at bat-outa-hell speed, if you pull off your glove and touch the wind screen, you’ll burn your hand.

And if you flame-out for any reason, you only have three shots per engine at restarting, because it’s not like you can do it by clicking an igniter plug. You have to carry enough of that hypergolic restart mix to handle contingencies, but not enough to turn the aircraft into a bomb.

Flying the SR-71 was dangerous and fabulously expensive. So as soon as the military decided they could get by without it, they retired it.

That’s a shame too, because the SR-71 is the closest thing to a space plane ever built.

Wow, this guy just captured an awesome video flyby from the baddest plane that ever existed. 😲

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1MG8VnpPcL/

I’ve been following an Instagram page called sr71haburats. Her dad was Butch Sheffield who flew the Blackbird. She is releasing a book here soon about all of his experiences and journeys. She posts some cool stuff on there. 

Stumbled across this cool video.It's still amazing to me over sixty years ago, this awesome aircraft was created and still holds the speed record.

Kelly Johnson, the genuis designer speaks at the end and says that he does not believe another aircraft will ever beat that speed and he was correct.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AawmVd6ij/

Oh, and let's not forget the titanium that was used to build the Aircraft was sourced from Russia. 😂

This thread is one of my favorite in non-moto (thanks for the thread-dredge G-man)...
...so much to read about this Icon of an airplane.

On the first page of this message thread (circa June 2016) there were conversations about Mach 8 and if it would ever be achieved as well as conversations about the need for spy planes into the future with the satellite technology that was/is available.

I perused the first two pages of this thread and there are so many links and videos that I have yet to read and watch. I think with this winter blast that is coming (and if the power stays on), I will have a few hours to dive into these links and videos.

kziok posted this photo in page one of this thread, what is it?
Early photoshop shenanigans?

You're welcome 👍

I love the Sr 71. My favorite aircraft of all time. 🙂

F/A-37 unique switch-wing design closely resembles patent #5,984,231 for "Aircraft with variable forward-sweep wing", issued to Northrop Grumman Corporation in 1999. This patent caused a wave of rumors about actual aircraft build with that design, with fictional name "Switchblade", that was publicized in November 2000 issue of Popular Science magazine. Moreover, according to aerospace journalist Steve Douglass, Northrop Grumman was one of the technical advisors for the Stealth film. Yet another plane sharing design characteristics with the Talon is the VF-19 Excalibur.

The cinema Talons also can perform a front-to-back flip-over (Pugachev Cobra) while in flight, per the Russian Su 37 Flanker-F. However, the Talon does it as a complete 360 roll, at high-G. The game Empire Earth features a fighter called the Talon in the "Digital Age Epoch". It is almost identical to the F/A-37, although it is a white land-based fighter instead of a black carrier-based one.

Technically, the F/A-37 should be called "Talon II", as the name "Talon" has already been assigned to the T-38 trainer aircraft.

It's a prop from a crappy movie called Stealth that had enough cooperation from the Navy that they were able to shoot scenes on the flight deck of an underway aircraft carrier.

There’s quite a bit of YF-23 in there along some good imaginative sci-fi.

B-1 takeoff at 2AM! 😲

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17jwg7Y5UQ/

Do you think it woke the neighborhood? 😂

Why is the Blackbird Black? Making the impossible possible.

When Kelly Johnson and his right-hand man Ben Rich were making the A-12 (there would be no SR-71 or YF-12 or M-21 blackbird without the A-12). The last thing Kelly wanted was more weight on the airplane the heavier it is the more fuel it needs. Ben came to Kelly with the idea of an to use a softer titanium Alloy instead of the brittle hard one they were using by reducing the heat of the airplane surface. They would be able to use the softer alloy titanium which they purchased from Russia/Soviet Union.

The CIA WOULD invent companies such as a pizza-making oven to buy their titanium. Ben recalled his university courses that black paint could be heat emitters as well as a heat absorber. Kelly thought it over and then gave Ben a quarter Kelly Johnson rarely gave out a quarter. He paid him the token quarter because he decided that Ben was right they should paint the A-12/SR 71 black, wait there’s more… In the paint. It held secret tiny iron microscopic pieces that dissipated electronic radiation. This would help scramble the image of a Blackbird enemy radar scope.
They said everything that they did to make these beautiful fastest airplanes in the world was difficult and a miracle, perhaps that’s why in the year 2026 there is nothing like the SR 71. God bless America 🇺🇸

On this date in 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class -- an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 mph and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet. Throughout its nearly 24-year career, the SR-71 remained the world's fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth's surface per hour.

(Note: Photo from 2020)

Also there was the X15 and X15A2 which flew at speeds over Mach 5 and out of the atmosphere. The X15A2 top speed run was Mach 6.7. The x15 started flying in late 1958 and flew till almost 1969.  
But I don’t think there is an Aurora/SR91 but there definitely is a SR72 and it will have a combine cycle engine, meaning a turbo fan and a scramjet. The SR71 had a combine cycle engine which was a jet turbine and a ramjet

Need and efficacy…

Both have recently stepped on the programs many are wondering about.

Unmanned and Autonomous systems are getting the funding these days. 

From Collaborative Combat Aircraft to Air Cargo “Drones”…the future doesn’t seem to require the white scarfs and humans.

Interesting.

I dont know anything about planes but my 32 year old nephew is an engineer who has worked in the defense industry since he graduated from WSU. He and his wife, who is also an engineer, worked somewhere out in the California desert at a military base, moved to Delaware and now just last week to a job with Lockheed in Denver.

The once a year I see him for holidays of course I ask what the hell he does. He is a bit vague or more then likely i am too stupid to understand what he is talking about but I do remember him saying that in his first job he worked on developing paint for the planes. I was like "huh, just slap some Sherwin Williams black or grey on it and call it good". But guess there is some qualities in the paint i was not aware of.

I think he helped design bombs back in Delaware. Again, he is a bit vague. 

There’s been amazing improvements in “RAM” (Radar Absorbing Material) over the last decade or so.

I’m guessing this is the “aircraft painting” that your nephew was hinting at.

The SR72 is actually a drone, it’s makes the plane much easier to built don’t have to worry about an environment that a human can stay alive in.  Also then don’t have to have any type of rejection systems. 
 

It’s a concept that dates back to the late 80s/early 90s (the SCRAMjet aspect of it is that old)…oh, and it’s the  plane that Maverick flies in Top Gun-Maverick.

It’s not an actual program…yet…and likely won’t be…it’s been canceled more than once.

The only part of that program that lives on is the “Dual Cycle” Turbine/SCRAMjet technology development & demonstration program that NASA funded after the Air Force opted out. Some aspects of that development program live on in DARPA’s Falcon Project.