Wanna fly a SR-71 Blackbird? RTFM.

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By John Baichtal
Posted 2010/05/10 @ 12:51 pm
Category Energy

It’s the awesomest spy plane ever — the SR-71 set speed and altitude records, flying 85,000 feet in the air with a speed of 2,000 mph. Less importantly from a military standpoint, it was super cool looking. Alas, all things must come to an end and the Blackbird was decommissioned in 1998. On the bright side, that means the flight manual has been declassified. Not all of the pages are available, but those that are pack all sorts of fascinating details. Check it out!

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2 Responses to Wanna fly a SR-71 Blackbird? RTFM.

Daniel on May 11th, 2010 at 7:59 am said:

The reason the blackbird has been decommissioned is simple. They will be rolling out the “Aurora” here in the next week or so. The Aurora is a new kind of plane that no one can catch, a hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 9 performance and MACH 11 in emergencies. Max Speed on this baby is well over 9000 mph (and yes you read this right…NINE THOUSAND MPH!) There will be two different forms of this plane, a fighter version named Aurora 2 and a bomber version named Aurora 1. Along with its speed it can carry over 5 tons of bombs and ammo and is virtually radar invisible so unless you are lucky enough to be looking right at the spot when it passes over, you will never know where the bomb came from. These planes can launch from Australia at 9:00am, bomb any target in Europe and be back home for a luncheon at 11:00am. Or let me put it an easier way..leave Australia at 9am, bomb your target in Europe or the Middle East and be surfing in California by 1 pm ON THE SAME DAY!! Want even more proof that this Aurora exists? try here http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/hshr.htm this clearly shows that DARPA is funding this plane. And unless you have a Cosmic Security clearance like mine, then I cannot tell you any more.

Now you can go back to sleep..if you can

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- feisty_robot on May 11th, 2010 at 11:55 am said:
  
  My understanding was that the Aurora project had been canceled a few years back, since drones are satellites perform any surveillance tasks it could perform cheaper and better. I recall reading (although I can’t find the link again, alas) that this had been deduced from a close reading of CIA and DoD budgets. Maybe Trevor Paglen knows!
  
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