SR71 Blackbird

	The SR71 Blackbird super high performance recon aircraft was born out of the cold war requirement for an information gathering aircraft which could operate over potentially unfriendly skies without getting shot down. The Blackbird effectively replaced the covert U-2 which had been successfully used for a few years in this role until the plane flown by Powers was shot down. The SR71 was a true quantom leap forward in aviation. The awe-inspiring performance of over three times the speed of sound, at heights in excess of 85,000 ft was unmatched. This extreme performance was required to give the Blackbird virtual invulnerability when on an intelligence gathering mission.
The Blackbird is powered with two Pratt and Whitney J-58 axial-flow turbojets each capable of producing around 32,500 lbs thrust. The range of the SR71 is over 2000 miles on internal fuel supplies, the aircraft is also capable of extending this by taking on fuel from a flying tanker. Construction of the airframe is mostly of titanium alloy. This material is used because of the substantial temperature build up associated with very high speed flight. Aluminium alloys for example while having good strength for their weight at low temperatures drastically lose strength when heated. This would make an aluminium alloy airframe break up at very high speed. The titanium metal of the SR71 while good at maintaining a good degree of strength at high temperatures still suffers from significant expansion as it gets heated in the 2000 mph plus airflow. This created another serious problem for the designers at Lockheed to overcome, the possibility of an airframe which would buckle in flight as it expanded.
Blackbirds feature all moving twin fins, outboard ailerons and inboard elevators. Length of the SR71 is 107.4 ft on the ground at 'normal' temeratures. This increases due to the expansion by up to around 12 inches when the pilot puts the pedal to the metal, wingspan is 55.6 ft. When ready for a sortie the aircraft weighs approximately 140,000 lbs of which 80,000 lbs is fuel. Sadly the SR71 Blackbird is no longer operational. Orbital satelites can do most of the work for which the aircraft was originally designed for. NASA took on a couple of examples for a while using them for various scientific tests. The last known flight of the aircraft was in October of 1999.