Lockheed SR-71 / YF-12 Blackbird

flateric

ACCESS: USAP
Staff member
Top Contributor
Senior Member
Joined
1 April 2006
Messages
10,701
Reaction score
6,567
...was listening the whole evening...
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/SR71/SRBooms/index.html
 
I was told that the plane increased in length something like 9 to 13 inches at speed due to kinetic heating.

Where does the plane stretch? Forward of the wing right?
 
I would imagine that by virtue of thermal conductivity throughout the structure, the stretching would be more or less uniform over its length wouldn't it?
--M
 
One would think, but the wings handle the expansion through their corrugations. From what I remember they get a little deeper when heated then shallow out when cooled.

So I'm guessing the only way the length can increase is the chine..
 
Cost per flight hours (1997): 37000$ (~8% of a Space Shuttle launch).
 
Last edited:
The above relates only to the SR-71...
@admin : Wasn't there any more suited place to past that post other than in the vast empty Secretverse?
 
Last edited:
The bizarre story of a 425 engine's starter cart and a Buick Wildcat:

message-editor%2F1623019046230-inlinei.jpg


 
‘Noteworthy, JP7 production caused a nationwide shortage of bug spray,’ says our friend Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) on her Facebook Page Habubrats.
[...]
Sheffield Miller explains;

‘Shell Oil developed JP-7 in 1955. Company vice president Jimmy Doolittle arranged for Shell to develop the fuel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and United States Air Force’s (USAF) secret Lockheed U-2 spy plane, which needed a low-volatility fuel that would not evaporate at high altitude. Manufacturing several hundred thousand gallons of the new fuel required the petroleum byproducts Shell normally used to make its Flit insecticide, causing a nationwide shortage of that product!

‘One of the ingredients in JP7 just so happened to be a crucial part of Flit mosquito repellant. Bearing in mind the huge amount of fuel we’re talking about here, Shell didn’t exactly have enough supply to meet the newly increased demand, so mosquitos everywhere caught a lucky break!’

 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom