That's a hell of a lot of rivets...

Seeing the naked skin of something which, when I was a child, was suspected to have been accidentally left behind on earth by visiting aliens is quite interesting.

One gets a comparable sense of wonder by going to an aerospace museum and getting an up-close look at something like an Apollo command module, a lunar lander, or even a space shuttle. For something which was hailed as the pinnacle of technology for its day (and was actually designed by rocket scientists and actually went into outer space), they're amazingly primitive-looking in terms of their physical construction. Lots of rough seams, loosely overlapping panels, poorly-aligned instruments and controls, aesthetically displeasing wiring harnesses, and so on. Granted, I understand that this is how aircraft are actually built in the real world, but when you grow up on Star Trek, you kind of expect spaceships to be, well... futuristic.




On a totally unrelated note, I believe I've made this exact observation in the past:

 

Joe-related images from a couple years ago.

 

Quick trivia. The blackbird actually leaks fuel when on the ground because the gaps needed at supersonic speeds are so huge. They leave room between the panels to keep them from expanding into each other when they get super hot.

I want to know if that was figured out in theory, or in practice.

Chuck Yeager: We're approaching Mach 2...oh ****, our "wings" just cracked.

 

In ordering #5, self-driving cars will happily drive you around, but if you tell them to drive to a car dealership, they just lock the doors and politely ask how long humans take to starve to death.

 

Thermal expansion and friction is pretty rudimentary to mechanical engineering. I can almost guarantee it was planned.

 

My version is more fun.

 

Also to be fair it was the first time where titanium was used for that much of an aircraft's structure/skin.

 

Pretty much everything designed at the Skunkworks under Kelly Johnson was the first time that X was ever used for Y.

That man is a legend.

 

They still knew its CTE.

Also, to be more of a buzz kill, I have heard they didnt leak nearly as much as people say they do. They have bladders after all, or im assuming they do anyway.

edit- my mistake, talking out my ***
https://books.google.com/books?id=WV...adders&f=false

 

Paging @hornetball, he flew one right?

 

 

I actually saw the SR71's last flight as it landed in Dulles.

 

The A-12/YF-12/SR-71 leaks like crazy on the ground. They carry enough fuel to get airborne and then hit a tanker. They use a special fuel called JP-7 that requires a catalyst to ignite. That way, it's of little concern that your national strategic resource is sitting in a puddle of jet fuel.

They don't let Navy guys fly them. We don't know how to flare.

By the way . . . Go Navy, Beat Army!

 

 

CG but funny.

 

Dicks. He eats them.

 

Oh boy. I'll have to find him at PRI and suggest a wider cam belt.

 

In my head I'm just thinking... CRASH!... CRASH!.. Doh close, CRASH ALREADY!

 

I think the most frustrating part of that video is that he didn't crash - specifically into a much more solid object.