It’s insane

I thought it was the most advance cruse nuke we have. What are they thinking?

Blonde driver’s convention.

Blonde gang plank.

Blonde parks car at home.

Blonde parks in the street.

Blonde washes car.

Blondes goes motorcycling.

Look what my blonde girlfriend bought on sale.

Note that the blondes on the motorcycles are not wearing proper safety gear. Sandals for footwear. Shorts, short sleeves. You might be a blonde, if you didn’t notice the third rider wasn’t wearing a helmet.

“Because it is often claimed the YF-23/F-23 was capable of Mach 2.stupid flight speeds”

They obviously both could go Mach 2. As we have said to limiting factor is thermodynamics. In those type of aircraft you have to be very careful what speed you are doing at what altitude and for how long to prevent excessive heat soaking.

You seem to be playing argumentative games from stereotypes derived from political news releases that gave vague references to the aircraft’s speed. The jargon that was being used was “Mach 2 class”. The military released that figure because the news hounds wanted a figure. The fact was that at the time they did not know what the exact maximum speed capabilities were on the aircraft, so it was speculative. It was also deliberately vague, because the top speed of the F-22 was and to the best of my knowledge is still classified.

“IIRC the SR-71’s planform worked out at around Mach 3.4 or so, NASA did look at increasing the top speed of the Blackbird, but decided the costs were not worth the hassle [which would indicate it wasn’t planform limited].”

That is obviously bogus, to put it politely. The reason it would be cost prohibitive is because the platform was limited, it would have required extreme design changes, which would basically mean an entirely different aircraft. That is why they started to consider different designs. In the end they decided that the up and coming surveillance satellite technology could fill much of the requirements of the SR-71 at a competitive price without risking human life, aircraft loss or the unwanted technology transfer that could result from an SR-71 falling into the wrong hands.

What was essentially NASA tried to make straight wing aircraft with conventional elevators fly supersonic, however that does not mean that the straight wings and conventional elevators were not some of the main limiting factors. They essentially were trying to use insane amounts of thrust and ignoring aerodynamics. They essentially were trying to use brute force, and were somewhat in denial about aerodynamics.

Unfortunately the SR-71 did fill a niche, and is missed. Satellites are predictable. The SR-71 can make an unexpected overflight before people can hide things like missiles. The SR-71 could be very handy to have if there ever was satellite warfare. A nuclear bomb at the right altitude could possibly wipe out many if not all communications satellites and surveillance satellites. So the whole world could essentially be mostly blind and dumb pertaining to world events.

From what I understand the SR-71 started to have superheating problems at about Mach 3.2 at operational altitudes. From what I understand the SR-71 could go faster, but only for short periods of time due to thermodynamic heat soaking problems. From what I understand about the only time the aircraft went much faster than Mach 3 .2 is for demonstration or to evade missiles or intercepting aircraft.

The idea that many people have that the SR-71 speed was limited because the power is obviously false.

I do not remember the exact quote but this is one to the best of my recollection from an SR-71 pilot. An SR-71 pilot was once asked something to the effect was power a limiting factor of the SR-71 speed, the pilot responded something to this effect:

I once had a missile launched at me when I was going about Mach 3, I advanced the throttle in just a few seconds later it was going several hundred miles an hour faster. Even the acceleration at Mach 3 was tremendous.

(In my book that indicates that there was plenty of reserve power).

Your arguments remind me of arguments that an alleged engineer was making, that the F-22 could barely go supersonic because it did have not inlet ramps on the engines. Despite his claims, it was later revealed that the F-22 could easily supercruise at Mach 1.8 and was still accelerating at only 70 percent throttle. I later found out that the guy was not even an engineer (which was pretty obvious by his posts), it turned out he had only taken a few classes in engineering, yet he was being represented as an engineer.

“there is a big big difference from Mach 2ish to Mach 3.2ish”

Yeah there is a big difference, we already know that, your just trying to dodge the issue by stating the obvious. We are talking about different aircraft and different designs, thusly there is a big difference in the speeds, however as I pointed out it all comes down to the same limiting factors for the different designs; thermodynamics.

Quite a number of years ago, I saw a “skin heating” drawing for the SR-71.
At Mach 3+ (no exact #), the coolest part of the skin was the inner top of the vertical stabilizers… at ~575° F.
IIRC, the canopies were actually cooler, but they were in the shock cone of the nose, and experienced little friction heating.
That tells you a bit about what would be the limiting factor on its speed.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they say it is several inches longer after it has heated up due to thermal expansion. They can’t even get the fuel tanks to seal until the airframe gets hot. It is truly an extreme machine.

Even though the windscreen is relatively (compared to other parts of the aircraft) cool on the SR-71 I have heard pilots say you have to be careful what you put near it. One pilot said it could melt plastic on the inside.

I thought that the SR-71 was mainly detected because of it’s large IR signature not it’s shockwave. :confused:

That’s the first I’ve heard of a shockwave being detectable by radar too.

Radar and infrared can both detect the SR-71 high-speed effects, though it is not necessarily directly detecting the aircraft itself. To the best of my knowledge most if not all of the missiles that were shot at the SR-71 used radar as their main system of guidance.

Even the exhaust plume can be detected on radar, not just infrared. On radar you can see the shock wave and the exhaust plume of the SR-71 when it was at high-speed from a great distance.

Of over 1000 missiles that were shot at it, the only damage that was ever detected was a small fragment from a SAM was found in the leading edge after a mission.

I don’t think GE or P&W pushed it all the way either.

To go Mach 1.8 was virtually no strain on the engines for either the F-22 or F-23. From what I understand at about 70 percent throttle they were still accelerating at Mach 1.8.