Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: ames!ames!claris!portal!cup.portal.com!png@uunet.UU.NET Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: SR-71 Blackbird question Message-ID: <1990Oct4.012336.11470@cbnews.att.com> Date: 4 Oct 90 01:23:36 GMT Sender: military-request@att.att.com Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 31 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Recently, jumper@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Michael Lanham) wrote: > The most incredible thing to remember about the Blackbird is that is was > designed and built by Johnson at Lockheed's sSkunkwork back in the 1970s. > The plane's design is twenty years old, still state of the art, and still > the fastest plane made. At least the fastest one in the white world. :-) Aviation Week of 1 October has a pair of articles about sightings of rather unusual, and presumably highly secret, aircraft in California and Nevada. Some of these sightings apparently involved hypersonic aircraft traveling at speeds in excess of Mach 5. And they say that Lockheed's Skunk Works is believed to employ about 4,000 people, although they're not (officially) in production on any aircraft. The artist's conceptions of these aircraft aren't nearly as nice-looking as the SR-71, though. That's what you get when you use CFD instead of trial and error, I guess-- boring shapes. (Although I give Northrop a few points for the YF-23A, which looks kinda cute.) . png "One final thing. When you're eating lunch in the cafeteria, please do not cut your sandwiches in half diagonally and fly them around the table! Remember that the cafeteria is not a secured area. Thank you."