This is the amazing Lockheed Martin SR-72—the space Blackbird

reply to post by dlbott


What G force? You aren't going to feel any Gs if it's a gradual acceleration, and you certainly aren't going to feel any when you turn. The SR-71 had a turn radius that could run thousands of miles at mach 3. There are no Gs to have to survive, even in a Mach 20 airframe.

reply to post by dlbott


If you were going Mach 20 it would have to be an orbital platform, anything else would probably be too heavy with the amount of heat shielding it would need.

Stealthbomber
reply to post by dlbott

 

If you were going Mach 20 it would have to be an orbital platform, anything else would probably be too heavy with the amount of heat shielding it would need.

Unless its a dirty corridor hopper. Then Mach 20 on an unmanned is going to need vastly less heat shield. I say unmanned as the acceleration is a killer. well, would be if men were onboard.

reply to post by Astr0


If there was a mach 20 ISR vehicle I don't think it would go from 0 mph to 15,500 mph (Mach 20) in a short enough time for a human to worry about acceleration forces. A Shuttle launch goes from zero to 18,000 mph (Mach 23) in 8 minutes straight up and I don't think they felt any more than 5 G's.

reply to post by Sammamishman


I don't think they even felt 5 for longer than a few seconds either. The average launch felt 3 most of the way up, with a peak of 5.

Astr0

chrismg
reply to post by JohnnySasaki

 

ya that does sound kinda farfetchd warp drive really this ain't star trek. come on man think of something that actually sounds reasonable for the near future.

Visual camouflage, meta materials than bend then re- broadcast microwave radiation in computer controlled bursts to fool the bi-static radars that the air is empty, oh and... lets see, a bi-static targeting capability using UAVs to saturate the air and the weapons carrier only using passive means to get pin point targeting radar data.

Lets for this exercise assume that 'white noise' type signals are used and are at the moment totally undetectable to an enemy as they are all so natural and so random.

Right. UWB. Of course, China & Russia are plenty good at radars & comm systems. Russia has the math, and China has the engineering & manufacturing & the math; in large measure thanks to all our outsourcing of telecom.

yes and one day radar might even outsource stealth by having the most powerful search radar to come all they will need is hypersonic speed to outrun the interceptors and sam's.

reply to post by chrismg


That's pretty much what the SR-71 and U-2 used to do, they could see them on radar but with the SR it used to outrun the SAMs and interceptor and the U-2 was too high for anything to hit it.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Well, except the SA-2.

I wonder how this will compare with Skylon or Lapcat 2 for commercial flights with there engines

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...(spacecraft)
en.wikipedia.org...(rocket_engine)

Is it possible to escape the atmopshere for few minutes with a SR-72?

reply to post by darksidius


No, it would require too much fuel to do it. They'd need either a booster or an external fuel tank.

tdk84
I wonder how this will compare with Skylon or Lapcat 2 for commercial flights with there engines

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...(spacecraft)
en.wikipedia.org...(rocket_engine)

The Skylon is much more ambitious and awesome if it works.

The SR-72 proposal has two entirely different engines, fed by the same inlet.

The Skylon has one engine which can be either air-breathing or a rocket for propulsion from Mach 5.5 to orbit. If you look at a cutaway of the Skylon design, most of the volume is taken up by the liquid hydrogen fuel tank for the rocket phase.

It is more technically risky because in the air-breathing phase it needs a super-advanced precooler (and so far the R&D has worked!)---if that works well, then one could build an entirely air-breathing mach 6 aircraft with that technology and have a single engine. Conceivably U.K. (where Skylon is based) could out-do the SR-72 and Space X if Skylon turns out to really work.

Something is very intersting in the SR-72 plane, its the fact that a hypersonic missile will have no need of a heavy booster, the speed of the plane will be enough to start a ramjet engine no ?

Sammamishman
reply to post by Astr0

 

If there was a mach 20 ISR vehicle I don't think it would go from 0 mph to 15,500 mph (Mach 20) in a short enough time for a human to worry about acceleration forces. A Shuttle launch goes from zero to 18,000 mph (Mach 23) in 8 minutes straight up and I don't think they felt any more than 5 G's.

Here's the equation, physics lessons age 13 :

S = Ut + at^2/2 ,
where,
s = distance
t = time
a = acceleration
U = initial velocity.

and acceleration of 1G = 10m/s/s

see no more guesswork all you need is a calculator....

reply to post by darksidius


A lot of the hypersonic missiles out there aren't hyersonic until the terminal phase of flight. Which means they can climb and use a dive to get up to hypersonic speeds.

medium.com... there is an interesting article about the timing of the SR-72.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I guess we are all wrong about the new hangar in Groom , a new article in Aviation week speak about the new UAS RQ-180 in the hangar, so there is no proof for a SR-72 like plane in testing at Groom.

reply to post by darksidius


Oh, there's a lot of activity at Groom. And don't believe everything you read.

Yes I hope so, I wait since I'm little boy to see alive a plane like SR-72 . It seem this days we see two new black projects become grey, the first with Lockheed the second with Northrop and I have a question in mind where is Boeing ? the USAF is very the great Air Force in the world with new project like that it will stay the best for the 21 century, its a very great chance for the people who work in