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Thread: The SR-72, Blackbird successor may scorch the sky at Mach6!

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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    The SR-72, Blackbird successor may scorch the sky at Mach6!

    The SR-72? Sounds like a whole new wave of UFO sightings will soon be upon us!

    Lockheed envisions Mach 6 successor to SR-71 Blackbird

    Over at the Skunk Works, aircraft designers are hard at work cooking up a hypersonic scion to the legendary SR-71, the superspeedy recon jet of the Cold War.
    by Jonathan Skillings


    The SR-71 Blackbird flew faster than any other production plane ever. Its successor, the SR-72, will go twice as fast.

    That's the big, jawdropping takeaway from Aviation Week's exclusive look at Lockheed Martin's work on the next-generation aircraft. A demonstrator version of the SR-72 could be ready as early as 2018.

    Lockheed told Aviation Week that the goal is for the new aircraft to be seriously hypersonic, blazing across the sky at around Mach 6. The intent, too, is to broaden the mission: the SR-72 would pick up where the Blackbird left off in performing high-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, but unlike its weaponless predecessor also would -- hypothetically -- be capable of carrying out strikes on targets.

    To achieve those crazy-fast speeds, Lockheed's Skunk Works unit plans to integrate an off-the-shelf, fighter jet turbine with an air-breathing scramjet, building off the Pentagon's experimental Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV) efforts, according to Aviation Week.

    Hypersonic airframes of any kind have been extremely rare birds to date, and test flights have been troubled at best. Earlier this year, the fourth and final flight of the US Air Force's missile-like, unmanned X-51A Waverider project eked out a top speed of Mach 5.1 in a six-minute flight, about half of which took place on scramjet power.

    Concept images of the SR-72 in the Aviation Week story show an aircraft with a pencil-point nose and a fuselage that tapers smoothly to the tail, uninterrupted by any kind of cockpit.
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  2. #2
    Looking on the internet, I read that Mach 6 is 4,567.2 MPH....

    Attachment 1094 Attachment 1095

    Amazing, breaking that Sound Barrier is visible. I wonder if breaking the Light Barrier is visible.
    Last edited by CasperParks; 11-03-2013 at 05:53 PM.

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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CasperParks View Post
    Looking on the internet, I read that Mach 6 is 4,567.2 MPH....

    Attachment 1094 Attachment 1095

    Amazing, breaking that Sound Barrier is visible. I wonder if breaking the Light Barrier is visible.
    Besides being impossible (Einstein/infinate mass), I imagine you'd appear to be in two places at once... as if you were arriving before you left.
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by CasperParks View Post
    Looking on the internet, I read that Mach 6 is 4,567.2 MPH....

    Attachment 1094 Attachment 1095

    Amazing, breaking that Sound Barrier is visible. I wonder if breaking the Light Barrier is visible.

    Quote Originally Posted by calikid View Post
    Besides being impossible (Einstein/infinate mass), I imagine you'd appear to be in two places at once... as if you were arriving before you left.
    Is anyone in the forums able to toy two images of a jet or more likely a stealth fighter in inflight?

    A bull's eye style color spectrum starting at dark trailing outward toward lighter colors, with the jet passing through the center from side angle and front. Or should it be lighter colors trailing outward to black? Overlay on top of breaking sound barrier broken through?

    If an altered images went viral, we'd have to step forward and debunk it as "done for what may it look like as compared to breaking sound barrier".

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