Basically conventionally cast blades, are not a homogeneous mixture of alloying components, you have many thousands of very strong crystal components with relatively weak borders where the crystals meet, that’s equiax casting. The first revolution was to find a way to make the crystals grow lengthwise along the blade, directional solidification helped to improve creep tolerance for the same temperature, or more temperature with the same properties as an equiax cast blade. With the advent of single crystal blades, with the addition of a pig sprue at the end of the mold plus careful control of alloy content and use of a chill plate, a single crystal would work its way through the spiral pigtail sprue and into the main melt, solidifying as a single crystal with perfect mechanical properties. I’ll see if i can find a pic to show the differences.

They’ll get there eventually, already there’s combined cycle ramrockets in service and in development. A scramjet is a far more integrated beast though, the whole airplane acts as the engine, forebody is the compression ramp and the afternody the expansion ramp. Finding non cryogenic liquid fuels and a means to boost it up to scramjet operating speeds without being bulky will be difficult for an employable weapons system. It would not be able to do a powered terminal dive to target though, the higher air density would rip it apart.

All i know is that in the 25 year service history not one SR-71 was so much as scratched by enemy fire. However an A-12 did get a minor ding from a SAM one time over Vietnam. It’s one of the only aircraft never to have lost a crew member in training or an operational sortie.

According to Ben Rich’s autobio an SR-71 did enter Soviet airspace by accident, the pilot was radioed to look for the direction of the sun and turn towards it, as it was just rising over Alaska at that time. Those arctic missions scared the **** out of the pilots, if anything went wrong nobody was going to be in a position to pick you up. I think they were checking out the Russian equivelent of the DEW line.

As for the Foxbat….Viktor Belenko said there was no way they could catch the Blackbird, too high, too fast and the missiles themselves didn’t have the performance. Never mind the fire control computers they had.

They tested several nuclear propulsion systems back in the 60’s or something, Pluto in particular was a ramjet…..i’ve seen video of it in operation. Freaky.

Well, Canada is in good shape, we’ve got the Alberta Oilssands, even if Ralf Klein lords it over the rest of us because he’s a have and the rest of us are have nots. Supposed to have as much oil as most of the Middle East combined supposedly. It’s not sweet crude as extracted and they turn a handy profit with crude prices being as high as they are. Apparently the break even point for extracting from oilsands is less than 20 bucks a barrel. No wonder Ralfie’s so arrogant.

Well, ground transportation systems are easier to convert over to hydrogen. Aviation fuels would have to be furnished a fuel that’s completely sythetic, or run THEM on hydrogen too. Geez every airport will look like the KSC in that case. Spill fuel there and you become a popsicle.

The Raptor’s CIP’s as they stand are a pretty big advance compared to current in service tactical fighters. And they still have 31% of the slots in those 2 CIP modules free for further upgrades. PLUS they have room to add another CIP which adds another 66 slots of expansion giving another 50% in computing capacity. Completely modular and upgradable. The whole aircraft runs on ADA software.