This is the amazing Lockheed Martin SR-72—the space Blackbird

reply to post by MystikMushroom


many times faster actually I think I read that the average bullet goes around 900mph? compared to the 4k+ on this craft its like the bullet's standing still!

reply to post by Zaphod58


That's correct, at least no aircraft I know of take of or land at m6 Hell, not even m1!

grey580
reply to post by Zaphod58

 

You ever hear of a C-5 refueling a KC-135?
www.airliners.net...

we once refueled KC-135's with a C-5, it was cool we carried 330,000lbs of gas and serviced up 3 KC-135's during an operational mission. they wanted them in the air to refuel fighter and support aircraft , so they could be on station the whole time in was decided that a c-5 would keep filling them up with gas that way they would be available to other aircraft and not have to return for refueling on the ground.

its called reverse flow air refueling. the process is the same, with the c5 behind the tanker, only difference is we use pressure to suck up gas through the boom at an incredibly slow rate (700lbs a minute compared to offloading 6000 lbs a minute to a c5).

And they are not q models anymore. when they got the r model engine, the q models turned into t models. and yes they are still active and are preferred at edwards

reply to post by boomer135


Well what do you know. Learn something new every day. I vaguely recall hearing that term before, but no one ever explained it.

reply to post by clay2 baraka


For what?

Zaphod58
reply to post by clay2 baraka

 

For what?

Mis-post, too many tabs open.

Story has made it to the BBC. BBC They claim it will be unmanned, which personally i find a little disappointing. Was hoping for a manned version myself.

reply to post by boomer135


Thanks for chiming in Boomer, I hope you didn't mind me quoting you earlier.
So do they generally still carry JP-7 in the seperated tanks on the Edwards T models or is all JP-8?

Whether already flying or not, its a sleek looking bird.
Combined nozzle may not be a good idea imo.

reply to post by Angelic Resurrection


Why do you think it wouldnt be a good idea? Just wondering

kingofyo1
reply to post by Angelic Resurrection

 

Why do you think it wouldnt be a good idea? Just wondering

For max efficiency from a ramjet, the air entry and exhaust should be co-axial

reply to post by Angelic Resurrection


ah gotcha.. Im no physicist so I couldnt tell you exactly what having the turbine and ramjet's exhaust coming from the same hole will do for it or against it unfortunately

Now here's where it gets really interesting. This was on Flight today....

“It’s been almost 20 years since the SR-71 was retired. If there was a replacement, they’ve been hiding it pretty well,” says Brad Leland, Lockkheed Martin's portfolio manager for air-breathing hypersonic technologies, quoted in Guy Norris' breakthrough story on the SR-72.

Very true. 20 years ago, I and a bunch of other smart and occasionally eccentric individuals, Guy included, spent a lot of time trying to track down that SR-71 replacement, and (if it existed) it was indeed hidden very well. Mind you, those responsible for hiding secret projects had a few advantages over us, including the services of unfriendly men carrying M-16s, the authority to turn large pieces of the Mojave into use-of-deadly-force-authorized no-go areas, and the resources to forge quite convincing documents that linked Area 51 to re-engineered spacecraft and dead aliens.

Indeed, if someone hasn't hidden quite a few aircraft programs very well, the taxpayer is owed a confession and a refund, because there are a few things in this murky story that are clear beyond a doubt.

Pretty straightforward so far.....

Until this hits you in the face.

By the way, one of the things that nobody in the unclassified world knew in 1990 was that, 25 years earlier, the CIA had been hard at work on an SR-71 replacement that would not merely poke along at Mach 6 - it would reach Mach 20 in a boost-glide trajectory. It was no paper study: its engine was designed, built and tested. And guess what the planform looked like?

Ares link

reply to post by Angelic Resurrection


From the diagram of the engine layout it looked like the ramjet function of the engine intake and exhaust was pretty close to coaxial. It was the turbine engine that was not on the same plane as the ramjet which seams to be pretty much SOP for stealth aircraft now a days.

Angelic Resurrection

kingofyo1
reply to post by Angelic Resurrection

 

Why do you think it wouldnt be a good idea? Just wondering

For max efficiency from a ramjet, the air entry and exhaust should be co-axial

Actually, with some decent CFD (computational fluid dynamics) modelling of their given sets of data, the ramjet plenum can be designed to almost identically match the jet turbines', to increase overall operational efficiency and performance... In fact, I bet this is twenty times more efficient than that of the SR-71's turbo-ramjet J58's, and far less mechanically complicated.

But we'll just have to wait and see, until we know for sure, won't we?

reply to post by Zaphod58


IF the sr72 goes m20, that would put it almost at the point of LEO speed, correct? and if the platform looked like a triangle, im gonna poop some britches

on second thought, without a scramjet or two how could it achieve m20??

reply to post by kingofyo1


Boost glide allows higher speeds. You basically follow an arc, using a rocket boost (in this case a ramjet boost I assume), and head "downhill" gaining speed as you go. You could then trade airspeed for altitude, and slow down on the "uphill". That's one way to do it anyway. Boost to near your target area, then head downhill towards the target, then once clear of it, back uphill, and fly home.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Well if they can manage m20 with just a boost glide, while keeping it from destroying itself and keeping the pointy end forward, as the articles put it, then i'd be a happy camper

Pulled this excerpt from one of the aviationweek threads on the 72

Just as importantly, the Skunk Works design team developed a methodology for integrating a working, practical turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) propulsion system. “Before that, it was all cartoons,” Leland says. “We actually developed a way of transforming it from a turbojet to a ramjet and back. We did a lot of tests to prove it out, including the first mode-transition demonstration.” The Skunk Works conducted subscale ground tests of the TBCC under the Facet program, which combined a small high-Mach turbojet with a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet, and the two sharing an axisymmetric inlet and nozzle.

Does this mean that instead of it just being a ramjet, they could in all actuality add scramject functionality??

reply to post by Zaphod58


I'm thinking this would have to be a different creature than the SR-72 depicted here. With a boost phase to M20 it would have to employ a rocket assist and be above most of the atmosphere to prevent burning up and no longer be an air breather. Boost to glide sound a lot like the Falcon project.