▲ 544 ▼ NASA mysteriously trying to pull world’s fastest plane, SR-71 Blackbird, out of retirement — and won’t say why (nypost.com) submitted 1 month ago by Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world 308 comments fedilink hide all child comments 🚀 2 Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I'd love to know what NASA has planned for it.
[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 point 1 month ago (2 children) they are both hypersonic aircraft. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) They are not. The F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.6. It's a supersonic aircraft. The SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.2 lol. Literally twice as fast as the F-35 but still well short of the Mach 5 required for hypersonic flight. The F-35 also has a flight ceiling of 50,000 feet, while the SR-71 has an 85,000 foot ceiling. The SR-71 served exactly one role: High supersonic aerial reconnaissance. No weapons, nothing. Just fly higher and faster than anything else on the planet. The F-35 is a strike fighter and air superiority fighter. They're really not comparable. permalink fedilink source parent [–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 1 point 1 month ago Technically, they're both supersonic, not hypersonic, but yeah, that's just semantics. The actual important detail is that the SR-71 is twice as fast (or more) as the F-35. There's a lot of testing you can do with the former that's just not possible with the latter. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) They are not. The F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.6. It's a supersonic aircraft. The SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.2 lol. Literally twice as fast as the F-35 but still well short of the Mach 5 required for hypersonic flight. The F-35 also has a flight ceiling of 50,000 feet, while the SR-71 has an 85,000 foot ceiling. The SR-71 served exactly one role: High supersonic aerial reconnaissance. No weapons, nothing. Just fly higher and faster than anything else on the planet. The F-35 is a strike fighter and air superiority fighter. They're really not comparable. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 1 point 1 month ago Technically, they're both supersonic, not hypersonic, but yeah, that's just semantics. The actual important detail is that the SR-71 is twice as fast (or more) as the F-35. There's a lot of testing you can do with the former that's just not possible with the latter. permalink fedilink source parent