An SR-71 they WANT you to touch

www.habu.org/ sr-71/17961.html Theres a museum in my hometown that has an SR-71 number 961 on display. Well its amazing because you can actually reach out and touch it. Only the nose but still. Its the last image on the site. The museum is the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

Hey outside of my hometown there is an aviation museum (at Eglin AFB) with one sitting ouside just as pretty as you please. Wicked blended wing-fuselage design. A lot of curves you just don't see in pictures...

I walked all around it getting video.

the link is dead for me

If you are tall enought, you can touch the:

One at the Pina air museum
One at the Seattle Museum Of Flight
the SR-71 and the A-12 at Blackbird Park in Palmdale

To be honest having been to all three, it felt like regular aluminum skin.

Here the nose might come down below 5 feet so almost anyone can touch it. and yes the skin just feels like the norm. It was taken apart for transportation to a hanger, maybe they refitted the skin with black aluminum.

Yes the skin indeed looks and feels like spray painted aluminum. But alominum aint going to cut it at those temps. Maybe an aluminum alloy, I don't know, I am not a materials expert. The skin I believe is titanium.

I got to lay hands on a Blackbird once myself. I described the event in one of my early posts. I got some good photos.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I got to touch one at the air museum by Robbins AFB. I love that bird. Just imagine what they have now that they are not telling us about.

Originally posted by Spectre
I got to lay hands on a Blackbird once myself. I described the event in one of my early posts. I got some good photos.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Cool set of pics. Yeah I was by myself at Pina too. The wife said, no way im walking around a dusty field looking at rusty planes. She napped in the car with the AC on

Originally posted by AeroSpace Case
Yes the skin indeed looks and feels like spray painted aluminum. But alominum aint going to cut it at those temps. Maybe an aluminum alloy, I don't know, I am not a materials expert. The skin I believe is titanium.

Im pretty sure you are correct about the titanium as aluminum turns to pretty much jelly at Blackbird speeds.

there is one at Duxford that you can touch, and have a good nose around with. when i was looking down the exhausty bit (sorry, its early) it was quite cool to think that what came out of there pushed the blackbird pretty damn fast

Originally posted by EvilSpallacus
i was looking down the exhausty bit (sorry, its early) it was quite cool to think that what came out of there pushed the blackbird pretty damn fast

I will draw the assumption that it no longer had its engines!

The one I personally witnessed ceratainly did not. All of the airplanes at that museum were missing their engines, and I would hope that all of the muntions scattered about, including a MOAB specimen, were disarmed as well. Bombs abound because Eglin is primarily a weapons research testing and development base.

I think the SR-71 was purported to fly at roughly mach 3.5...

Hmmm... nice round number.

I once asked a friend what their top speed once, right after he got done telling me how cool it was to work on the flight deck during flight tests. He gave the classic TS level response...


"I don't know"


Sure...

I didnt know that there was more than one in Virginia. There is one at the National Air and Space museum at Dulles Intl' Airport. It is their newest addition to the museum, and the planes they have there are quite intriguing. Also they have one at Lackland AFB outside San Antonio Texas. I am pretty sure that most of them are on display around the country, obviously stripped of all its usefull and classified technologies. With there being one in Richmond VA, I am sure that there is one at Langly AFB.

Fry

Cool.. I am in San Atonio in a couple of weeks...

I was in DC earlier this year vistiting our good friends at DARPA and I some how missed the Dulles musem. Still kicking myself...

What is DARPA? I have never heard of that Acronym.

Originally posted by frey51
What is DARPA? I have never heard of that Acronym.

DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A simply amazing agency that has thier hands in just about every type of tech.

They are the agency that even gave us the Internet they were called ARPA back then though.

Heres DARPA's website if you are interested

www.darpa.mil...

Some of the projects they are working on now that we know about. Morphing Aircraft Structures, MetaMaterils, Exoskeletons, Nanotechnology, all manners of Robotics, Optical stealth and a host of other stuff.

I can just imagine what projects are classified

Originally posted by ShadowXIX


They are the agency that even gave us the Internet they were called ARPA back then though.

i thought it was sweedish who made it?

You can walk right up and under a nice SR-71. Plus the B-36 can't be missed. Literally and figuratively. Good museum, I highly recommend.

Originally posted by devilwasp

Originally posted by ShadowXIX


They are the agency that even gave us the Internet they were called ARPA back then though.

i thought it was sweedish who made it?

Nope it was created in the 1960s by ARPA, the Internet was known as ARPANET back then though. US DOD money at work.

ARPA created the net and saw that it was good