hey guys welcome to my very first
youtube video and also episode 1 of
airplane Anatomy I am so excited to
share the series with you guys where I'm
going to be breaking down different
airplanes start to finish from their
first production to their final flight
and everything in between so it's gonna
be a lot of engineering a little bit of
physics a little bit of history and
design but mainly adjust me fangirling
over airplanes so of course today we
need to talk about an icon of aviation
one of the fastest and highest flying
planes that's ever been built and also
the namesake of Elon Musk's new baby of
course it's the Blackbird family
specifically we're going to be talking
about the sr-71 blackbird so I'm going
to leave some time stamps here if you
want to skip ahead to different sections
otherwise without further ado let's get
started
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so you might be wondering where did
demand for such an aircraft come from to
begin with well it was arguably due to
one single incident and that was with
the YouTube plane so the u2 at the time
was used as a reconnaissance or spy
plane used to gather information about
what's going on on the ground whether it
be photographing military bases or
looking at strategic positions etc so in
1960 at the onset of the Cold War a u2
plane was shot down over Soviet Union so
people soon realized that at the pace
that the Soviet Union was developing
their missiles and their radar
technology that the YouTube plane would
soon become obsolete so President
Eisenhower at the time asked Lockheed
Martin which was the company that
produced the u2 to make a better and
faster version of the u2 that would
essentially never get shot down so of
course this was a very difficult task
that was given to the advanced
development group at Lockheed Martin
also codenamed skunk works so an
engineer at skunk works was called Kelly
Johnson and he would later become one of
the key contributors of the entire
Blackbird project so in February of 1960
the CIA signed a 96 million dollar
contract with Lockheed Martin for them
to produce 12 of these new Blackbird
planes and the program was a go now of
course designing an airplane that flew
faster and higher than ever before was
no easy task and on top of that they had
to be able to take pictures from the
airplane as well so one of the first
issues was of course heats in order for
the airplanes be flying at Mach 3 or 3
times the speed of sound the airplane
would be subject to temperatures of up
to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 500
degrees Celsius that is very hot this is
due to the air particles that collide
with the leading edge of the aircraft
essentially converting their kinetic
energy into thermal energy or heat so
the faster you fly the higher heat
tolerance that the airplane needs
now of course at the same time the
temperature outside is extremely cold
for example at 70,000 feet it is minus
67 degrees Fahrenheit outside so that
means parts of the aircraft will be
subject to extreme cold while other
parts are in extreme heat so the
solution that Lockheed Martin came up
with solved this problem was actually
very simple it was black paint
now since black both emits and absorbs
heat it was able to distribute evenly
the heat across the entire surface in
addition to the black paints titanium
was also used to manufacture 90% of the
airplane which was very rare at the time
so titanium was chosen because it holds
up in high temperatures but is also
lightweight enough to fly now the
downside of using titanium was that it
was extremely brittle it was said that
during the first heat treated batch of
titanium parts that they would actually
shatter on the ground if you drop them
from the table now of course they fix
this later on but it was also found that
on assembly lines the steel tools that
workers normally used to manufacture the
airplane would actually damage the
titanium material so in order to
manufacturer the plane the entire set of
tools had to be remade using titanium
instead now ironically the USSR at the
time was one of the biggest suppliers of
titanium in the world so in order for
the u.s. to get their hands on this
large supply of titanium they had to
make up you know bogus companies or do
it through third world countries and it
was actually very ironic that the USSR
ended up basically being a sponsor to a
program that would eventually surveil
their their own country now remember
another main goal of designing the
Blackbird was stealth or in other words
the ability to appear as small as
possible to you enemy radar to avoid
being detected now in order to do this
the engineers came up with
groundbreaking designs for the physical
aircraft with very smooth curves and
flat surfaces and edges that were
considered
super futuristic for its time and in
addition to that the black paints that
the Blackbird uses also contains iron
Dirac particles which help absorb radar
as well and it actually used very
special fuel that contains cesium and
how it worked was after being burnt
through the engines the afterburners and
being expelled through the exhaust it
would actually create a cloud of plasma
behind the airplane that's helped absorb
any electromagnetic waves so in this
case radar so that it wouldn't be
reflected back to the ground now there
are so many different problems that the
engineers ended up facing to design the
Blackbird and so many creative solutions
that they came up with to solve those
problems for example designing a new
suits and masks to sustain the crew in
case of an ejection at extremely high
speeds and extremely high altitudes and
also even coming up with a brand new
tanker aircraft in order to refuel the
Blackbird at very high speeds now these
are extremely interesting challenges
that we don't really have time to go
into today but I'll leave some links
down below if you want to do some
further reading so in April of 1962 the
black bird flew for the very first time
now this was not the sr-71 this was
called the a12 the a12 blackbird so
eventually three different variants were
made of the a12 Blackbird the first was
the YF 21 which was an interceptor plane
that was armed with air-to-air missiles
for the US Air Force now unfortunately
it never went past its prototype stages
and never went into operation the second
variant was called the M 21 which was
designed to be a actual drone carrier it
looks like the Blackbird but with a
pylon on top where the drone would sit
and be deployed from now unfortunately
during testing
one of the drones collided with the
mothership and actually caused the death
of one pilots so the program was shortly
cancelled after that so of course the
third variants was the sr-71 standing
for strategic reconnaissance now the
difference between sr-71 and the a12 was
that the sr-71 had two seats instead of
one where you have a pilot sitting in
the front and obviously flying the plane
and a reconnaissance systems officer
sitting in the back where he'd be
handling the navigation the different
systems as well as the camera equipment
etc in addition to that the sr-71 also
had additional fuel capacity than the
a12 now in order to counteract this
additional passenger as well as the fuel
weights some of the camera equipment had
to be downgraded on the sr-71 so the a12
now was a plane that was optimized for
the CIA and now the sr-71 was created
for the US Air Force and in December of
1964 the first sr-71 blackbird took to
the skies for the very first time after
the sr-71 entered service in 1966 by the
US Air Force it began just breaking
records left and rights it became the
fastest jet in the world with a cruising
speed of Mach 3.3 with top speeds of up
to 3.5 recorded now for comparison if
you look at the passenger jet of today
like this Boeing 747 or the Airbus a380
they have a top cruising speed of around
Mach 0.8 the concorde which was the
fastest passenger jets had the top speed
of Mach 2 which is similar to the top
speeds of different fighter jets like
the f-22 or the f-35 today similarly the
sr-71 also broke records in terms of its
operational ceiling or the max altitude
at which it could fly which was 85,000
feet again for comparison the typical
airliner today flies below 45,000 feet
at the YouTube play in which the sr-71
replaced had a max ceiling of 60,000
feet which is similar to the ceiling of
different fighter jets that we
today so this just goes to show how
incredible this sr-71 plane was for its
time although to be fair a lot of these
fighter aircrafts were commercial
airliners are obviously not designed
with the same goals in mind as the sr-71
once-dead because of the extreme
capabilities of the sr-71 at the time
none were ever shot down in interviews
with pilots they said that if they had a
missile locked on them they would simply
change direction and speed up to outfly
the missile the mig-25 of the Soviet
Union at the time were also no
competitor to the sr-71 as well however
this badass plane didn't come without
its drawbacks for one the plane was
considered slightly unreliable meaning
that flights would come back with rivets
or screws missing or just generally with
parts that need replacement or repair
because of this the plane actually
averaged around only one flight per week
which was considered very slow although
no planes were shot down 12 of the 34
sr-71 s produced were actually lost due
to mechanical failures the plane from
production to takeoff also required an
army of people and resources to support
it for example before takeoff in order
to start the plane the engines actually
each required a start cards which was a
truck that drove underneath each engine
and actually got it spinning enough to
3,000 rpm in order for the engine to
self-sustain the aircraft also took off
with very minimal fuel in order to
reduce the stress on its tires and its
brakes and would get refueled
immediately after takeoff flying the
plane was no easy task either pilots
said that they needed to keep the nose
within one or two degrees of the
prescribed angle in order for it to be
stable meaning that the aircraft is
constantly at the edge of losing control
in addition to that there is a very
common engine problem known as an inlet
on starts on the sr-71 in front of the
engine inlets was a cone that could
actually move backwards up to 3 feet in
order to readjust the position of the
shockwaves to reduce drag now this cone
is in a slightly off position
it could lead to a buildup of internal
pressure that eventually releases by
violently blowing out the Front's and
basically blowing the Chokwe forward
instead of back this often caused the
engine to be extinguished meaning that
there is thrust being produced by one
engine on one side and none being
produced on the other meaning that there
is a very violent yacht's one side for
the aircraft's this is of course
extremely dangerous and actually led to
the loss of one of the sr-71 planes the
sr-71 stayed in service with the US Air
Force until October of 1989 when the
program was shut down the last Blackbird
made its flight from Los Angeles to
Washington DC in 64 minutes which
actually broke four records at the time
now there are many different theories as
to why the sr-71 went out of service a
lot of people said that it was because
it was too expensive at the time the
sr-71 s cost 34 million dollars each
which would be equal to 280 million
dollars today although is widely
disputed some people say that it cost
upwards of two hundred thousand dollars
an hour to operates and the fuel alone
cost thirty-seven thousand dollars an
hour
now that's much faster than burning cash
a lot of people also attributed the
unreliability of the sr-71 as one of its
downfalls it's very important to also
look at the political climate at that
time so in the 70s and the early 80s a
lot of the commanders and the pilots of
the sr-71 s were promoted to higher
positions within the Air Force so in
those positions they did a really great
job of highlighting the value of the
sr-71 program to Congress as it got to
the later 80's a lot of those generals
ended up retiring and got replaced with
a newer generation of generals who
thought that's maybe there was more
value in developing new bomber programs
for example the b2 plane so as a result
the sr-71 program was cut and
unfortunately they are not seen in the
skies anymore however in 1999 NASA flew
two black birds in order to conduct
high-altitude and hide speed flight
research
and that was the last known flight of
the Blackbird most of them unfortunately
live in museums today so what follows
the legacy of the sr-71 while most of
the missions conducted by the sr-71 back
then are now being performed by unmanned
aerial vehicles where au V's better
known as drones now of course these are
much safer and cost-effective methods to
perform the same reconnaissance missions
as the sr-71 s did back then so
unfortunately it is very unlikely that
the sr-71 blackbird makes a comeback any
time soon
however skunk works from Lockheed Martin
actually released that they might be
working on in SR 72 UAV that is
supposedly going to be flying at Mach 6
or twice the speed of the sr-71 so at
least we have something to look forward
to right thank you so much for watching
to the very end what did you think of my
first video are there any planes you
want me to cover are there topic so I
should talk about more leave them in the
comments below and don't forget to Like
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