I was stunned when I first heard this. I think I almost sobbed. I thought,
"What a disgrace to destroy such beauty and elegance.
Regards,
Bob...
--------------------------------------------------------
"Art is not a reflection of reality. it is the reality of a reflection."
-Jean Luc Godard
----- Original Message -----
From: "Godfrey DiGiorgi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> When they were decommissioned, the ultimate sacrilege was committed:
> they cut the wings and backbone on all but the three (?) left in
> NASA's care so that they could never be flown again. I practically
> cried when I heard that. I hate to see beautiful things destroyed,
> whether for good reason or not.
>
> When I was at NASA/JPL, I worked in the Radar Science and Technology
> group. One day, in the basement lab where a lot of the equipment I
> occasionally had to deal with was located, a funny big lump of thing
> was delivered. It was a Synthetic Aperture Radar unit from the nose
> of an SR-71 ... declassified and now useless, they sent it to us to
> play with. It was an optical processing SAR, doing the essence of the
> required 2DFFT transformations required to take the returned
> backscatter from the radar chirps back into the spatial/intensity
> domain via a set of custom made, very complex lenses. To do this job,
> you need to know the vertical altitude, the speed of the aircraft,
> and the frequency of the radar transmit/receive cycling. The
> returning signal went through the lenses and wrote an image onto long
> reels of 70mm film, speed matched to the aircraft ground speed. The
> lenses had built into them the assumptions of altitude for image
> scanning data takes.
>
> Three sets of lenses were packaged with the unit. Calculations showed
> one set was for FL 70, one for FL 80 and one for FL 90. So I know for
> a fact that the SR-71 was capable of hitting at least 90,000 foot
> elevations for data acquisition... And I'm sure there was at least a
> 15-20% additional, emergency altitude buffer to get out of the way,
> fast!, when a surface-to-air or air-to-air missile was aimed at one.
> Of course at such altitudes it would likely be more akin to a
> ballistic missile than aeronautical flight!
>
> My friend, Dr. Al Bowers of NASA/Dryden, was for a short time the
> manager of NASA's SR-71 planes. You've probably seen him on a couple
> of Discovery or Science Channel shows from time to time. He's a big
> Ducati and Alfa Romeo enthusiast, a cool guy, and is also into
> Hasselblads and Rolleis... I've often cajoled him that he should have
> someone take me up for a joyride... ;-)
>
> The SR-71 was a unique and amazing aircraft. Whether its like will
> ever be seen again remains to be seen ... or it's flying now under
> the black shroud of security and we'll hear about it in another
> decade and some...
>
> Godfrey
>
> On Oct 20, 2007, at 1:07 PM, Bob Blakely wrote:
>
>> Actually, it's obsolete for reasons other than speed or altitude
>> supremacy.
>> And no, current the crop of stealth aircraft can't do everything it
>> could.
>> It's still a Mach 3.2+, sustained flight aircraft with an 80,000+ ft
>> cruising altitude, 85,000+ ft ceiling. I know of no other existing
>> aircraft
>> or drone capable of sustaining this type of heat, though there are
>> rumors of
>> "Aurora". One day the government will remove the "pluses" and we'll
>> have the
>> actual figures. The SR-71 is simply not cost effective any more. It
>> uses
>> JP-7 fuel,which is somewhat ago a problem. Further, turnaround time of
>> intelligence is not adequate for tactical commanders. As to overhead
>> resources, keep in mind that satellites exist in predictable
>> orbits. Hide
>> yourself and/or your activities when the SV's pass. The satellites
>> can be
>> maneuvered, but this takes serious propellant and is expensive as
>> it reduces
>> the life of the very costly satellites drastically. Further, though
>> the
>> overheads have amazing capabilities, the photos are NOT as good as
>> those
>> from reconnaissance aircraft. It's about altitude, that is
>> distance. All
>> lenses are ultimately limited in angular resolution by diffraction as
>> expressed by the Airy disk phenomenon. This means that for a given
>> aperture,
>> the ground resolution decreases with the altitude of the sensor.
>>
>> the molds for the skin and other special jigs used in construction
>> of the
>> craft were destroyed because the US isn't going to make any more and
>> Lockheed was charging a pretty penny for large volume classified
>> storage at
>> the time.
>>
>>>
>>> Bob Blakely wrote:
>>>> The top speed and altitude of the craft is still classified for some
>>>> reason.
>>>> Only NASA flies the few that are left. Under orders from the
>>>> government,
>>>> all the molds for the skin and other special jigs used in
>>>> construction of the
>>>> craft were destroyed.
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