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From: geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: SR-71 Blackbird question
Message-ID: <1990Oct4.012543.11924@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 4 Oct 90 01:25:43 GMT
References: <1990Sep27.031756.7889@cbnews.att.com> <1990Sep29.155314.7821@cbnews.att.com>
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From: geoffm@EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)


>From: texbell!letni!digi!digi.lonestar.org!user1 ("USER1")

>I am not sure about the re-entry burn up thing but I will tell you
>what I heard:

>A friend of mine in school knew a guy who used to fly the SR-71 or at
>least had gone through the program.

	[...]

>The oil is a solid at room temperature and must be heated by
>a blow torch in order to be put in the plane.


That can't possibly be true.  If it was, the oil would solidify in the
engines while the plane sat between flights, and the engines themselves would
have to be heated somehow before they could be started.  Oil doesn't have to
be solid at room temperature in order to have the resistance to breakdown 
necessary at high operating temperatures.  I've read quite a bit about the
SR-71, and I've never seen a reference to this.


Geoff


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Geoff Miller                    + + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.sun.com       + + + + + + + +       Milpitas, California
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