God, the Blackbird is such a beautiful and amazing piece of work... puts a dreamy smile on my face every time I see one. Youtube has some incredible videos on how the thing was engineered, flown, and fueled.

Once, many, many years ago, I had gone to discuss his investment portfolio with one of my personal customers, an RAF Squadron Leader at an East Anglian airbase. This was at a time when SR-71s were 'not' flying from British bases. I spent a long time in his office trying not to stare past him, out of the window, at the Blackbird parked on the dispersal apron dripping coolant. He didn't say a word about it. Neither did I. Aviation beauty, like all beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The Mosquito. Concord(e). Mustang. All beautiful. The Blackbird wasn't beautiful but, dear Lord, it was impressive.

That might not have been coolant. The fuel tanks were designed not to seal until heated by the 2000 degree friction heating at speed, so SR-71s sitting fueled leaked like crazy.

My favorite SR-71 factoid is that over the years the constant heating and cooling cycles of flying and landing caused the titanium skin to anneal to the point where many SR-71s are virtually single crystals of titanium. They found this out when they were doing maintenance on one and couldn't find a saw blade to cut a new hole in the skin. Ah, metallurgy...

Dr. Phil

Edited at 2010-07-06 03:38 pm (UTC)

My son chose to have his fourth birthday there.