Lockheed Martin Developing Successor To the SR-71 Blackbird 160
Zothecula writes "When the last SR-71 Blackbird was grounded in 1998 it was a double blow. Not only did aviation lose one of the most advanced aircraft ever built, but also one of the most beautiful. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works has now revealed that it is building a successor to the Blackbird: the SR-72. Using a new hypersonic engine design that combines turbines and ramjets, the company says that the unmanned SR-72 will be twice as fast as its predecessor with a cruising speed of Mach 6."
Faster then a speeding dupe (Score:5, Funny)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/01/1911249/skunk-works-reveals-proposed-sr-71-successor-the-hypersonic-sr-72
Don't worry samzenpus - you're not as bad as timothy.
but this one goes to 72! (Score:3)
Will it be available in the traditional Hotblack Desiato livery?
Will it still leak oil straight off the showroom floor like a '57 Jaguar?
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Will it still leak oil straight off the showroom floor like a '57 Jaguar?
Or, more relevantly, will it leak fuel straight off the assembly line floor like its predecessor?
http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/ [sr-71.org]
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Re: Faster then a speeding dupe (Score:2)
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Love the UDP sig. Did you get this message?
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this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:2, Interesting)
the sr72 already exists or lockheed martin wants the press and public buzz for funding.
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This is a correct assumption.
Basically, the automatic cutbacks coming up mean all military spending will be cut in half.
All of it.
Lockheed Martin (which I used to own, and even bought and sold option in - yes, made tons of cash) has frequently had the Cheneys on their board, and other individuals determined to drag the US into the Two Permanent Wars Always era, when the correct response is to end overseas wars of foreign aggression and let the Middle East rot.
Solve that and there is no budget deficit.
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Basically, the automatic cutbacks coming up mean all military spending will be cut in half.
All of it.
Yay!
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, I wish they would just take the military budget for Air Conditioning and give it directly to NASA. it would triple our space research funding.
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, I wish they would just take the military budget for Air Conditioning and give it directly to NASA. it would triple our space research funding.
As a former soldier, I don't want them to cut funding for air conditioning. Operating in climates with 120 F for months at a time is pretty hard, and the computers and equipment starts failing.
But I get your point.
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As a former soldier, I don't want them to cut funding for air conditioning. Operating in climates with 120 F for months at a time is pretty hard, and the computers and equipment starts failing.
But I get your point.
Maybe they could stop using tents to store people/computers.
Something insulated might cut the power bill....
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If they cut the funding, they might find a way to still have the air conditioning, just not power it with generators fueled with $400 per gallon fuel. Solar power springs to mind.
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:5, Funny)
=As a former soldier, I don't want them to cut funding for air conditioning. Operating in climates with 120 F for months at a time is pretty hard, and the computers and equipment starts failing.
If US soldiers were not deployed in places they have no business being in the
first place, the need for air conditioning would drop drastically.
You mean places like California?
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:5, Funny)
We dont need a war in california. Yes I disagree with everything California stands for but that is no reason to go to war there.
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Good, then it needs to be hampered.
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cutting anything just to cut is stupid. DO you think just random cutting will get rid of pork? It will not, pork is always the last to go.
What we need is targeted and precise cuts on a project basis.
But no, lets just leave all our allies dangling, and leave our defense wide open. Cause that's what happens when you just slash and burn.
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Maybe our allies should start picking up their portion of their defense tab rather than relying on the U.S. taxpayer to constantly foot the bill.
and leave our defense wide open.
Like what, goatse? The danger now is rarely military in nature but electronic. The military industrial complex even admits this. They are more worried about state-sponsored electronic infiltration than they are about some nation developing jets or missiles.
Take a look at
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:4)
Aren't some of them -- namely, the ones like Japan and Germany which double as our defeated foes -- mostly disallowed from having their own military by treaty?
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I was under the impression that you guys had a "defense force" that wasn't allowed to exceed a certain size.
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The low hanging fruit is the military. A force so large that there's little we couldn't take and hold (Moscow and Beijing being about the only two places on the planet we couldn't ta
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Even if you are worried about invasions, keep the Navy and Air Force more or less intact and encourage more civilians to develop sound marksmanship skills. Don't discourage anyone from becoming proficient with either the standard infantry rifles or some high powered 50cal sniper rifle.
Make the US a hard target to get to and a nightmare to hold onto.
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I would pay to see this movie.
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What makes you think they would want to defend a country and laws that offer them nothing but misery?/quote>Because they are fiercely territorial and already organized in a para-military manner. When the shit hits the fan, gangs do work together, even if only for a short while before shooting each other again.
And yes, "keeping" some place is poorly defined. How about "form a 10 mile diameter circle (adjusted for local conditions) and kill anyone trying to cross in or out of it, with greater than 50% efficiency"? Does that work as a definition of "keep"? Because I can't think of anywhere the US would have problems other than Russia or China. Yes, someone else said "London" but I think the US would not have that much trouble forming a killing ring around London and sealing it off from the rest of the world. We even have operational military experience in London airports. We did it in Baghdad, and there are few places less hospitable.
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I'm assuming you weren't referring to DHS when you mentioned increasing homeland defenses. DHS is a useless money pit.
As for the military being able to take and hold things, does Somolia ring a bell?...Black Hawk Down? We couldn't even handle that little piece of shit, so don't be so sure about our capabilities. If you were talking about wars with tanks and ships and planes, it's all good, but then you're referring to the types of enemies we worried about during the Cold War. Times have changed, and an
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As for the military being able to take and hold things, does Somolia ring a bell?...Black Hawk Down? We couldn't even handle that little piece of shit, so don't be so sure about our capabilities.
We weren't trying to take anything. We were trying to shoot the bad guys in a limited conflict. We've always done poorly in those.
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Ending the standing military and increasing homeland defenses would balance the budget.
No, it wouldn't. Our deficit is that insane. It would help a bunch, but really a strong standing military is a good investment - the economic damage done by an invasion is so extreme that even if the risk is low, it's worth funding some military. However, there's no doubt that significant military cuts are coming: we'll cut everything except mailing checks to voters until there's just nothing else left to cut.
(BTW, there are greedy and sociopathic folks on our southern border that are armed better than a
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No, it wouldn't. Our deficit is that insane.
No, it wouldn't. Our deficit is that insane.
Nope. The most recent completed year we spent more on the military than the size of the deficit. That means, we'd have had a surplus, if not for the military.
BTW, there are greedy and sociopathic folks on our southern border that are armed better than any police force, despite not being a nation-state.
Better armed than *any* police force? The LAPD has tank-like vehicles, and the National Guard would quickly respond, and has jet planes and lots of tanks. We need trillions of dollars of military to save us from scary Mexicans? That sounds like racist fearmongering. Beware the Canadians!
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Right, anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, where have I heard that before?
The Mexican drug cartels are better organized and better equipped (and far more sociopathic) than the Mexican army. And as someone who will always Remember the Alamo, I don't ignore the threat the Mexican army presents.
As far as the deficit vs military spend - I go by the link in my sig - those numbers are well sourced. Either way, we're sure to keep cutting military spending, heedless of any risk, and cutting everything else
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Right, anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, where have I heard that before?
Not from me, it just sounded like the Republican talking points for anti-immigration rules. "fear the brown, fence them out before they all swim across"
And as someone who will always Remember the Alamo, I don't ignore the threat the Mexican army presents.
Yes, I've been to the Alamo. I always thought the famous attribution was spoken *to* the mexicans as a warning, not to the Texans as a motivator. "You killed us, we'll kill you" was the message, not one of treachery or whatever you are implying. The army came in and took a military fort. Relatively uninteresting, until you note the losses on each side,
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always thought the famous attribution was spoken *to* the mexicans as a warning, not to the Texans as a motivator.
Not where I grew up, anyhow. Heck, my Mom had a notepad stuck to the fridge with "Things to Remember" printed as the header, and places to write 1 -10 as a numbered list of tasks. Of course, 1 was pre-printed: "The Alamo". Maybe it was an earlier time, but it was seeped into the culture as motivation.
Anyhow, ever generation has had it's hippies with their "we don't need an army" and "what if they gave a war and nobody came". Sadly, all of human history begs to differ, and the answer to "what if they gav
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Anyhow, ever generation has had it's hippies with their "we don't need an army" and "what if they gave a war and nobody came". Sadly, all of human history begs to differ, and the answer to "what if they gave a war and only one side came" is very grim indeed. There's still a lot of genocide ongoing in the world.
The founding fathers were "hippies" by your definition. They lived in a world with no standing armies, and didn't write the Constitution expecting a standing army sucking massive amounts of wealth out of the country.
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They were also in a frontier with big empty spaces at the borders, and had veteran, proven state militias and professional military leadership. There was no thought of "we'll never need an army" but instead "we have all the army we need already, in the state militias".
Today war is highly technical, and raising a militia fairly pointless when it comes to war - a soldier with the right training and equipment is vastly more effective than a guy with an assault rifle. As we move more to bots it will become mor
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The most recent completed year we spent more on the military than the size of the deficit. That means, we'd have had a surplus, if not for the military.
The same could be said of Social Security or Unemployment, Welfare and other Social programs. Maybe we should end those as well.
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You just lost a lot of credibility due to 1) the "racist fearmongering" remark, which was just uncalled for and out of proportion, and 2) your gross overestimation of the US military capabilities. You think London would be a piece of cake? or Tehran?
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How is that relevant? What are the people in Manchester going to do to "overthrow" the Americ
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But starting over eliminates unjustifiable expense (Score:2)
You have a point, but there's an important counter-point. The way the federal budget works for most projects, each year it's assumed that each project will get 104% of the spending it got last year. So in 1960 they approve $DUMB_IDEA. Fifty years later, $DUMB_IDEA is still eating away at your paycheck, with a budget ten times as high as the initial experiment. If you start with an across-the-board cut* and then look at which programs should have funding restored*, that means someone has to look at $DUMB
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Our allies (clients) are rich enough to defend themselves without our subsidy. The Cold War is over and we have SSBNs so no nation-state is going to attack us as we could simply erase their country. That includes North Korea. Those nuke-armed fighters sitting Zulu Alert for decades weren't there for show, they were there to end the Norks if they felt froggy enough to attack the South. Not "slow them down", but destroy them completely.
We could slash the money and let the military determine where the cuts g
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Cutting anything just to cut is stupid. DO you think just random cutting will get rid of pork? It will not, pork is always the last to go.
What we need is targeted and precise cuts on a project basis.
But no, lets just leave all our allies dangling, and leave our defense wide open. Cause that's what happens when you just slash and burn.
Exactly, in fact projects like the SR-72 with no actual mission and the new F35 fighter that no-one wants should be at the top of that list of cuts. The F35 contract is past $60B now with no working aircraft so far. All the DOD departments wanted was a tech refresh of the existing fighters and not something brand new, but all the Congressional pork barreling got in the way of fiscal responsibility.
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It needs to be cut by more than half to get rid of the budget deficit.
Stop being the world's police should allow cuts of ~80%.
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You mean the deficit that's been gone down by half over the last 6 years? that one?
Maybe you should make it a personal mission to learn about this stuff instead of just repeat dumbass headlines?
"Stop being the world's police should allow cuts of ~80%."
nonsense.
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Guess what, dipshit. Spending half a trillion, instead of a whole trillion, more than you're bringing in still isn't a good idea.
And guess what, cutting 80% of the military budget, would bring the deficit to about zero. There's about 175k military personnel deployed outside the US. Probably half that many more as contractors. None of whom are actually protecting the US.
Re: this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:2)
Putting a quarter of a million people on unemployment is really going to help the economy. Not to mention all of the towns around military installations that would collapse, and not just in the USA.
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What could possibly go wrong with putting all the guys who know how to shoot well out of work?
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Guess what? .25 M when added to 11.3M isn't going to matter much.
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Looking at the bigger picture, deficit spending is still higher than pre-2008, and those 3-years you're comparing to were not typical due to things like TARP. Spending is continuing to balloon, yes the deficit is still projected to hover in the 0.8 trillion/year range.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/download_multi_year_1960_2018USb_15s2li101mcn_G0f [usgovernmentspending.com]
Continuing to run up the credit card, paying only interest is a sure-fire way to bankrupt the household.
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Most bridges need fixing or replacing, and have done for decades in not a few cases. Much of the power grid needs repair, renewal, rebuilding. We could get smart enough to build a fair number of improved nuclear plants and significantly get into thorium cycle - that covers everything from mining, tailings reclamation to all kinds manufacturing of parts for this and that. Lots of crops are under-harvesting even where gleaning is allowed. I've lost all track of how many thousands of miles of waterways, in
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A "large" unemployment problem? You're pretty ignorant there. .25M added to 11.3M unemployed would not be a 'large' problem. It would be a 2% change.
It wouldn't reduce tax revenue, it would vastly decrease tax spending.
If you think that the government makes as much off taxing military personnel as they spend on them, you're so far down the rabbit hole, there's no hope for you.
increased by $200 billion = down by half? 40% incr (Score:2)
2008 deficit: $458 billion
2013 deficit: $680 billion
2014 deficit: $744 billion
> Maybe you should make it a personal mission to learn about this stuff instead of just repeat dumbass headlines?
Perhaps you should. Rather than venturing to comedycentral.com on that mission, may I suggest you start with http://www.treasury.gov/ [treasury.gov] and http://www.cbo.gov/ [cbo.gov]
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Excuse me, raymorris, but why would you leave out 2009, 2010, and 2011?
Say, you wouldn't have an agenda in leaving those numbers out, would you? Nah, not you.
This year's deficit is 1/2 of last year's deficit. And in 2013, the federal deficit as a percentage of GDP is less than it was under the Reagan Administration. Last year, our budget deficit was 4.1% of GDP. Under Reagan's 8 years as president, his average was 4.2%.
And wouldn't you say that looking at the deficit as a percentage of GDP is a pretty
Duh, I replied to "6 years ago". U prove sequester (Score:2)
I replied to the person who said today's deficit is half of six years ago. So I compared today to six years ago.
You wouldn't have a reading comprehension problem would you? No, not you.
Reagan won his election in a landslide because interest rates were around 21%, unemployment was 7.5%, and inflation was high. Reagan made some investments to cut interest rates in half, decrease taxes by $15,000 per family, slash inflation, reduce unemployment, and win the cold war.
Obama spent the same amount of money to -
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The only campfire going on here is the $85 billion a month being given to the banks by the Fed.
Better to just drop that money from a helicopter.
Re:this possibly means one of two things.. (Score:4, Insightful)
the correct response is to end overseas wars of foreign aggression and let the Middle East rot.
Are you a parent? Many parents intervene to stop their kids from squabbling, and think they are reducing conflict. But if they just stay out of it, the kids will figure out how to resolve the conflicts on their own. Their resolution may not be what you, as a parent, would have imposed, but it is still an end to the conflict.
The same would likely happen in the Middle East. If we were no longer there to impose our will, the squabbling would likely stop as the countries in the region realized that they really had to deal directly with each other, and had to live with the consequences of their actions.
American power is not the solution to the Middle East's problems. To a large extent, it is the cause of the problems.
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If we were no longer there to impose our will, the squabbling would likely stop as the countries in the region realized that they really had to deal directly with each other, and had to live with the consequences of their actions.
Let us keep in mind that there is considerable upside for some parties to some of those consequences, such as controlling up to half the world's proven oil reserves as Saddam Hussein attempted to do in the 80s and early 90s. He didn't succeed because the US organized a coalition against him.
Unfortunately, the grown up version doesn't have either the harmlessness or insignificance of your analogy.
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He didn't succeed because the US organized a coalition against him.
Or, alternatively, he almost succeeded because Kuwait had weak defenses and inadequate local alliances since the Kuwaitis expected the Americans to bail them out.
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Or, alternatively, he almost succeeded because Kuwait had weak defenses and inadequate local alliances since the Kuwaitis expected the Americans to bail them out.
It wouldn't have mattered if Kuwait was expecting a bail out or not. They were in a losing position no matter what they had, excluding perhaps some nuclear weapons. Too few people and a bad tactical position means they would have lost anyway.
It's worth noting that Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula is just as bad off militarily. That's what Iraq would have steamrolled next. Then after Iraq built a few fission bombs, it'd be time for the second Iraq-Iran war.
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But as it turns out, the US has a good sized Muslim population both from immigration and converts. And most of those go on Hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. There's considerable opportunity to win "hearts and minds" with positive propaganda there.
Saudi Arabia also has conside
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Ah, but would the Iraqis have such an edge over their neighbors if the US (well, the West as whole) didn't help them in the first Iran-Iraq war?
There's that oil. I used Iraq as an example, but Iran, Egypt, and the rest of the region has similar potential. The fundamental problem here is simply that part of the world has a lot of highly valuable oil concentrated into a relatively small amount of real estate. That allows the rulers to accumulate quite a bit of power.
And there's not much, aside from the interests of outsiders to keep the key oil bearing parts from falling under control of one ruler.
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And then we would be blamed for allowiing the resulting humanitarian disasters to happen.
But at least that way it would cost us less money.
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Well said. Why is it that we get angry when some poor people collect welfare and food stamps, but nobody seems to care about corporate welfare, which is orders of magnitude greater in cost?
The perpetual-war syndrome needs to be stopped. We seem to think that because we succeeded in WW2 that we have some mandate to step in and solve all the worlds problems, despite repeated failures. Meanwhile, Haliburton and other quasi-military mega-corps are laughing all the way to the bank.
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You mean like the money borrowed from Social Security to pay for all these wars?
Easy fix - get rid of the earnings cap and disallow "carried interest". Problem solved.
That's what 2/3 of old people want, anyway.
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THIS THIS THIS. Just lose the damn earnings cap on SS!
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the sr72 already exists or lockheed martin wants the press and public buzz for funding.
I'd be surprise if it already existed. I thought that all the existing hypersonic contraptions are plagued with many material and endurance problems. I mean, it's probably not impossible, but it still seems to be fairly close to claiming that the U. S. Air Force operates a fleet of intergalactic cruisers.
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I'd be surprise if it already existed. I thought that all the existing hypersonic contraptions are plagued with many material and endurance problems. I mean, it's probably not impossible, but it still seems to be fairly close to claiming that the U. S. Air Force operates a fleet of intergalactic cruisers.
I would also be surprised, but not for the reasons you just gave, after all look at the problems that plagued the SR-71. Also the SR-71 is 50 years old, we should have the expertise to improve on the design.
The reason I would be surprised is because we have other projects that fulfill the role that are more cost effective, such as the flying twinkie. Another reason is that although it is possible to design a stealth aircraft that can go beyond Mach 3, the massive plume of hot exhaust gasses will give it a
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Another reason is that although it is possible to design a stealth aircraft that can go beyond Mach 3, the massive plume of hot exhaust gasses will give it away.
Does it really need exhaust gases to be noticed in IR? The aerodynamic friction alone ought to be sufficient for that.
/. develops suckcessor to Friday (Score:3)
I suppose this is the suckcessor to Friday's submission.
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Well, I don't know about you, but sometimes I need to be re-trained after weekends.
Granted, it's a cool plane... (Score:4, Insightful)
... but how many successors does it need? [slashdot.org]
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SR-72fri, SR-72mon, and maybe even a SR-72wed if we're lucky.
too bad... (Score:2)
Use the search Luke. (Score:2)
They can not even use their own search function [slashdot.org].
The big question... (Score:3)
I think we all have one big question:
With that kind of thrust, can we just add-on an extra oxygen tank, and convert it into the space-plane we've been promised for so long?
Perhaps this could be the proving grounds for a space shuttle replacement, powered by ramjets instead of solid rocket boosters?
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Mach 6 = 4000 mph, give or take a few.
4000 mph = 1800 m/s, approximately.
1800 m/s is about 20% of orbital speed.
So, no, it would take a bit more than an add-on O2 tank to take this thing to orbit.
Not a spaceplane [Re:The big question...] (Score:3)
With that kind of thrust, can we just add-on an extra oxygen tank, and convert it into the space-plane we've been promised for so long?
No. Orbital velocity is about Mach 25. This plane cruises at Mach 6. So you have another 19 to go.
Still, it's a step. One small step for a plane...
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Um, no. Nobody educated has that question.
No more than adding a Mr Fusion would convert a Tesla S into a time machine.
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No, the oxygen is because fuel needs an oxidizer to burn, and if you aren't in the atmosphere, you don't have that.
Re: The big question... (Score:2)
I think he actually meant the oxygen tank to allow it to make an insertion burn once it's in space. Y'know, space, where nothing burns unless you bring your own oxidizer?
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wtf? (Score:2)
https://www.google.com/search?q=lockheed+aurora&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS531US531&espv=210&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=JQZ4UrbZLomEiwKxiYHQBg&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1547&bih=969 [google.com]
But now, it (the sr-71) is being replaced? If history is any indication, there have been at least 3 new spy planes sinc
Confusion (Score:2)
Nothing here makes sense. If they were developing the plane, they would do it in secret and fly it in secret, just like the U2 and the SR71. Is this some kind of distraction for the real plane? Or some PR for a money grab? Whatever it is, this is NOT the military's new spy plane.
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The logical scenario is that they are developing it in secret and it has a number of test programs behind it...and now they want a bunch more money to make a number for real---and buried in the funding will be money for other R&D for classified drones.
Back in U-2/SR-71 days, they had enough funding at leisure to not need to make PR to get money.
Because we really need one??? (Score:2)
Unmanned (Score:3)
I was going to point out this was a dupe, but a bazillion people beat me to it.
But I also wanted to say, this is pretty cool, and we'll discover some practical solutions getting this thing operational. My one regret is that it is unmanned. Someone should be able to climb in, take off from a runway, and fly it to Mach 6, just to be able to say we could do it.
Budget (Score:2)
Oh sorry, we can't afford to keep funding food stamps but a mach 6 unmanned jet is no problem.
See the violence inherent in the system?
It's cool, but do we really need it? (Score:2)
I thought part of the rationale behind grounding this plane was it's cheaper to use a spy satellite nowadays. If it's truly a multirole aircraft, say a bomber, then it could have its uses.
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Spy satellites have known paths so you know that between oh 1:00 pm to 1:15 pm you need to hide your secret stuff. But I think they have already gotten past this limitation with the flying twinkie since it can deploy a satellite as needed and pick it back up.
I believe that the only R&D going into the SR-72 project is the amount of capital it took to make that rendering and a short blurb.
I do not see this as even a proposed aircraft, it is at the most misinformation campaign.
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It's far better to use a modern fuel seal system that doesn't leak.
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At least one of the articles I've seen on this thing this week mentions a possible Strike role variant. If the whole spectrum of SR-72s to come is based around a single, unmanned design, we're basically looking at the US considering building an unmanned Nuclear Bomber. Just as the SR-71 led to the YF-12 / 12A Interceptor, this design is supposed to transition from a Recon role to a more active combat version, but it's interesting that the powers that be are talking Strategic Bomber rather than a more defens
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I wonder how bad or frequent an unstart will be with a mach 6 aircraft.
I don't know how frequent they might be, but seeing as the proposed SR-72 aircraft is using a common inlet, the severity might be reduced. One of the problems of unstarts on the SR-71 was the sudden intake of supersonic air caused "loss of air flow to the engine, an enormous increase in drag, and a significant yaw to the side with the affected inlet." The common inlet would mean both engines would be effected, so - while there would pro
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Modeling of fluid flow instabilities is far more quantitative today with large-scale simulations.
There are something called "dielectric barrier junction" plasma emitters which are starting to be used to manipulate the airflow at the boundary layer, and perhaps with some tricks they can reduce the instabilities.
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Yeah, I miss that show, too [wikipedia.org].
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The faster you go the more fuel you need which makes going supersonic very expensive, and add to that the maintenance needed for the engines and the air-frame.
Even if the cost of operating a new concord is less than the last one it is still something that would only be available to the truly wealthy.
Don't worry though, I'm sure that rendering is the closest that plane will ever come to being built.