There is no eye contact or body language possible between the pilot and the communicator in the SR-71. What makes that story so perfect is not just the speed aspect, not just the smugness of the other planes, but the interpersonal relationship between the pilot and his crew member. It's just perfect story-telling.
Perhaps equally exciting is that the inertial navigation system on the SR-71 is calibrated by looking through a telescope at stars in broad daylight. Apparently quite simple, but still cool.
It's the same way with ICBMs. Once they've gone ballistic they look up at the stars to get their bearings. Then they switch to their gyroscope to guide themselves in. It makes sense, in a chilling way: you can't rely on radio signals like GPS, because in a nuclear exchange your satellites are likely to be destroyed or jammed. You can't rely on surface features because in a nuclear apocalypse those might be changing too. The only things that can be trusted to work are the gyroscope and the stars. And the payload.
(In case you're wondering, I know this because I was wiki-ing around after my iphone's accelerometer went nuts to figure out how state-of-the-art gyroscopes worked. Turns out that there's a special type of gyroscope, the Ring Laser Gyroscope, which uses relativity and interference patterns to achieve ~0 drift. RLGs were developed for ICBMs.)
It is a dreadful poesy to think that the last stargazer from this planet might have been a robotic rocket, looking up once at the fixed stars for all of humanity before ending it.
I'll be honest, I'm kind of enjoying 'Aviation Week' here on HN. This is the kind of stuff that got me interested in math and science to begin with. Too bad my vision is so awful.
I think it's more like War Machinery Porn Week, really. Never really felt fully comfortable about this stuff myself. But for whatever burred tooth in the cogs of fate got us here, we'd be reading of (and marvelling at) the derring-do of people history has taught us to despise.
Nevertheless, here we are. And here, most importantly, at least from my perspective, I am. And - or perhaps, "and so" - I enjoyed this one.
It's really important to separate the tools from the intent IMHO.
Just as one can use a butcher knife for its intended purpose or use it to kill, it's possible to design military equipment to "kill people and break things" without necessarily meaning to wage aggressive warfare.
It's true that the military tools are often misused, but that wouldn't change in the real world by simply not having them; pacifist countries are sheep in a field full of wolves.
Just look at Ukraine, and then compare to nations that e.g. gave up nuclear weapons and then suffered "regime change". The list includes Libya, parts of Ukraine, and effectively Iraq (who were very close to a nuke circa 1991). There's a reason Iran and North Korea want the bomb, and that reason is because the deterrent value is real, not imagined.
Rather it's the same as an underlying principle behind the Second Amendment push (no one cares for my defense more than I care for my defense), scaled up to the geopolitical level.
So just as I think it's possible to appreciate the craftsmanship and design that goes into a well-made katana even if you don't intend to run the sword through someone's guts, I think it's possible to appreciate at a technical level some of the technology used in military gear without feeling like it means you support war. ;)
One could also argue that the SR-71 was a tool that prevented death rather than facilitated it -- by delivering intelligence. It was a reconnaissance aircraft and despite being operated by the Air Force the payload of the Blackbird was never weaponized.
The paperclip maximizer is the canonical thought experiment showing how an artificial general intelligence, even one designed competently and without malice, could ultimately destroy humanity. The thought experiment assumes an AI stable structure of goals or values, and shows that AIs with apparently innocuous values could pose an existential threat.
The idea: any simple-minded optimization behavior which doesn't take into consideration human values can, taken to the logical extreme, prove hazardous.
It was posted to HN a few years ago, though it didn't trigger much discussion at the time:
It's a great thought experiment. I think I even read it when it came across HN. But it seems to me to be an argument about why we keep humans "in the loop", as it were, and less about what tools you give the humans.
It does open some questions about how "innovative" one might want to be when developing a weapon, even for defensive uses.
It's sort of unfortunate that nuclear physics made the gains it did, when it did, as a big part of the reason the U.S. ended up making the big push for the bomb, at a time when they needed all the resources they could get put into things like logistics for shipping materiel, was because of the fear that Germany might get it first. I.e., "if someone will get the bomb, we'd better do it better they do".
I suppose the Cold War would have ensured proliferation one way or another, but WWII certainly did not help the cause of non-proliferation.
But either way, war or defense (whatever you call it) can never be a simple-minded optimized anything. It is almost the very highest level of human holistic competition. So I'm not worried about the technology (as long as we don't make it self-aware, of course), I'm worried about the people.
Especially considering that human beings can, very easily, become totally divorced from healthy, "normal" human values.
It's not enough to merely keep humans in the picture, but to keep healthy, undamaged humans in the picture.
Let's say, perhaps, that after a particularly costly war, the only humans left are a mixture of mentally unstable, angry, ambitious, victory-driven amputees, with intense biases imbued upon them by surviving particularly horrific and violent combat. These people, in a warped attempt to say "never again", optimize an artificially intelligent, fully automated child-rearing skinner box [1] to mold children into their own image, as the natural and perfect outcome which produces a society averse to violent warfare. The result is that every child that emerges from the skinner box is an angry, warped sociopath, missing limbs, who rationalizes even trivial behavior with an arbitrary moral high ground of extreme polar ideology.
But wait... aren't humans... technically classifiable as self-assembling intelligent constructs, spewed forth from the bald nothingness of space and time by mere coincidence? What if WE are the beast we fear?
it seems to me to be an argument about why we keep humans "in the loop"
That's helpful but not sufficient.
• It doesn't address the criticality of appropriate feedback controls and limits. People and algorithms both make bad decisions.
• A given group of humans might not act in the best interests of all humans, or even a specified larger group, or even themselves.
Re: how innovative we want to be even with defensive weapons. Body armor is generally far less dangerous than an RPG or assault rifle. But defensive technologies such as antibiotics can, if misused, lead to larger downstream threats (through antibiotic resistance). The areas of unintended consequences, moral and morale hazard, and the like, make for fascinating study.
Re: the bomb. Yes, the Germans and Japanese were both conducting nuclear research (though I believe the Japanese project was limited and/or curtailed). Another interesting speculation I've seen is of what might have happened had the US not used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it's possible that the true horrors of the weapon wouldn't have been realized and that the next military action (the Korean War) might have gone nuclear.
The places where I've been spending time looking at things are a bit more nuanced though: sustainability in light of finite resources and/or maximum flows: is saving lives really an unalloyed good? What of technology in general which might increase technological risks (simply of failure). Was the Green Revolution a good thing? Humans have been something of a paperclip maximizer, except that our paperclips are humans. In the long run even that may not work out for us. Systems need negative feedback loops.
That's a good point. People on HN are sometimes a little quick to put on their "it's just a really cool piece of technology!" blinders and ignore the gruesome, wasteful military industrial complex that brought them these "badass fuckin' guns" which do, in fact, kill real humans in real life.
Nobody is really ignoring the reality of it. These are weapons of war. Not everyone reading HN shares the same outlook on the morality of war. I am personally an anti-war veteran, but that's a personal outlook that comes from some careful deliberation after observing how and why we wage war, and being fairly dissatisfied with both.
The beauty of technology is it's ability to overcome obstacles and act as solutions to a problem. I do not find that the morality of the problem can tarnish it.
Need to exterminate roaches quickly? Gas chamber your house. Save yourself from numerous diseases... I mean c'mon, you couldn't think of any legit use of poison gas technology?
I will always regret not becoming a military pilot when I was young enough. When I was a kid, nobody ever told me how to pursue that career and I didn't have a clue. In my 30s, I became an Army officer and had a great time but always wish I could have gone the flight route.
My son is almost 2 and you can bet that I'll tell him what he needs to do to achieve this. [1]
[1] - To be a USAF pilot, your best bet is to bust your ass in high school and be both a student and an athlete and secure one of the coveted congressional endorsements to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where you must bust your ass and hope for a flight slot. Similar route for the Navy and USMC: U.S. Naval Academy.
The process to become a U.S. Army helicopter or fixed-wing pilot is a lot easier. Pursue a slot as an Aviation warrant officer. Successfully complete basic training, WOCS, and flight school. You don't need a college degree but it helps. The key is age: the doors close at around 32, so you have to start early.
Currently, the US Air Force is moving away from its focus on pilot culture to intelligence. In other words, you'll start seeing more colonels and generals with an intelligence background instead of a pilot background. There's a running joke in the USAF that intelligence drops the bombs and pilots are just bus drivers.
I don't think it has to be that hard...I bought a small plane from a Navy pilot (an instructor for F-18s at the time). I asked him how he got the job, and he said he joined on a whim, after being recruited at the mall. The deal he got when he signed up was he'd get to be a pilot as long as he didn't wash out of the program.
(I also spent an evening at the bar w/ a class of his students. I was expecting super gung-ho jock types, but they were actually very laid back and a little bit dorky. Interesting experience for a boy raised by hippies in the Oregon woods.)
What come across particularly well to me in this piece has nothing to do with aviation but job satisfaction. This guy got to do an amazing job, one he had dreamed since childhood. It was intense and took astonishing levels focus, effort and a dedication to be the best he could. His reward for this was the flying, the very job itself. Best of all when it was over he was ready for it to end. I hope I can look back on my career so beautifully.
The world's fastest plane was built before we landed on the moon. We're spoiled in tech by Moore's Law but the difficultly in making advances in commercial and military aviation is disappointing. In the 1970's everyone probably though NY to London in 2 hours was a given by now.
In aviation there is also a law of diminishing returns because there are certain parts of the flight profile that are flown well below maximum speed. Even if you could do Mach 20 at altitude, you're still going to spend about 30-40 minutes between climbout (keep it under 250 below 10k!), descent, pattern entry, and approach.
To be fair, a lot of the "We're too cheap to fly >Mach 1" comes down to the fact that door-to-door travel time doesn't really come down commensurate with the increased costs of faster-than-sound travel.
When the airport is outside town, and you have to arrive 1.5 hours before the flight takes off, taking even a large % of the flight time off doesn't make a significant dent in total travel time.
I think that for any travel there is some critical time when it doesn't matter how long it is as long it is < 24h and more than a long commute. You are wasting a whole day for that leg of the trip anyway no matter if the flight is 4 or 10 hours. So why waste money.
It makes some difference but I agree with your basic point. Especially as you have to add 2 hours or so buffer for check-in, security, etc.--especially for an international flight.
And if you're looking for more generalized "reduced pain of travel," the reality is that really comfortable seating arrangements and decent food/drink can be delivered on a sub-sonic widebody for a lot less $$ than it would cost you to travel the route on a hypothetical supersonic passenger jet.
Transpacific is probably where the difference would matter the most, assuming the supersonic jet had that kind of range (which is sort of doubtful). But it's worth noting that, even with today's jets, some really long haul routes that would significantly cut travel time for some don't make economic sense and have been eliminated (e.g. New York-Singapore).
There is a big difference between a 4 and 10 hour flight. For a 4 day weekend, I wouldn't take a 10hr trip but 4 is doable. Of course, I live 20 minutes from an international airport.
It's probably not quite that bad although, given the plane doesn't exist, we're speaking in hypotheticals anyway. As I recall, the Concorde was something like 30% more than a first class ticket. It's hard to imagine such a thing being built in the foreseeable future unless there are radical breakthroughs that totally change air travel economics.
As I said elsewhere on the thread, for most people under most circumstances, the main thing is the overall travel experience rather than the number of hours. I don't find flying business transpacific all that unpleasant--just boring. And the first class setups for some of the Asian etc. carriers who have 3-class configurations look pretty amazing though I've never experienced them first-hand. The technology and capability exists to make long-haul air travel almost arbitrarily comfortable (and connected). It's just a case of how much money a large enough segment of travelers are will to pay.
Not mentioned in the story (or comments yet): You can see the SR-71 at the Smithsonian out by Dulles Airport, along with a shuttle and a huge array of other hardware. Very cool if you're into that sort of thing.
I also highly recommend people book a tour for the Boeing factory in Everett (about an hour just north of Seattle) where you can see 747s, 787s, 777s, etc. being manufactured in the world's largest building (by volume).
Pedantry: the aircraft at the Museum of Flight is actually an M-21 blackbird (with a D-21 drone attached), not an SR-71 blackbird. It's the only surviving M-21.
There are about 20 SR-71s in museums (plus an SR-71 cockpit at the Museum of Flight, which you can sit in.)
Likewise the Airbus plant in Toulouse, France. You can see A380s being put together in one of the world's other largest buildings. The tour is usually in French but highly worthwhile even if you don't know the language.
Udvar-Hazy really is amazing, the scale of the place is just mind blowing.
At one point you can swing a left and see a jet, which looks decent sized but not particularly special compared to planes around it, until realize that it's a full sized 707 jetliner...
I brought my brother-in-law from Korea to there one time not long after it opened. After spending the requisite half-hour drooling all over the floor by the SR-71 we went into the space flight hanger.
I pointed to the shuttle there and said "look at that! it's a space ship!" Another visitor looked over at me and said "no that's just a...." eyes widened in sudden awareness, "I guess...I guess it is a space ship!"
My brother-in-law excitedly asked "this is a great model, where's the real thing?"
"That's the real thing, you're 5 feet from an actual, real space ship."
Mind blown, we next walked over to the actual Enola Gay...which sits not too far from an actual Concord.
It's an absolutely mind-blowing awe inspiring place.
edit BTW, the shuttle flew at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph) so fast you could see the sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes. That's Mach 22.
If the Shuttle were flying at sea level, yes. But of course it isn't. Mach number is meaningless in orbit.
(During reentry, once the atmosphere is thick enough for Mach number to be meaningful, I believe the highest readings seen are Mach 25 to 26, since the speed of sound is lower at high altitude.)
There's also an SR-71 on display in the foyer of the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS: http://www.cosmo.org
The Cosmosphere is one of my favorite places. It has the largest collection of American space hardware outside of the Smithsonian in DC, and the largest collection of Russian space hardware outside of Russia. Definitely worth a visit.
There's also a Y-12 on display in front of the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It's actually the one pictured in the story (second image down).
Unfortunately, it's in kinda rough shape right now. It's been outside for years and the paint is starting to fade.
For those firmly lodged in the center of the US, there's an SR-71A on permanent display at the Strategic Air & Space Museum near Omaha, Nebraska: http://sasmuseum.com
I remember seeing one at the Paris flight show when I was a kid. It looked like nothing else. You'd think it was a fighter jet, except it's so massive and streamlined, it's more like a misplaced, oversized prop from a sci-fi flick. Absolutely amazing aircraft. Anybody has a list of other "odd" planes? I know about the giant Soviet plane, the Kalinin K-7 [1], though while being "special" it's not particularly elegant and never went beyond the prototype stage.
Those machine gun turrets are quite unusual on the K7.
It took a while for planes to become big tubes with wings on them, with the jet engines in pods. Economics is the thing, it is down to cost per mile, that is it for passengers and freight (fresh vegetables). The era of experimentation is over. Tilt-rotors, Spruce Gooses, Harrier Jump Jets, Concordes, twin-boom P38s - history.
There is an A-12 (trainer) at the California Science Center in LA. Apart from the shuttle I think it's the most interesting thing there... and it's outside next to the parking lot!
Yes the A-12 at the California Science Center in LA is an amazing site. Seeing it up close (it's positioned lower so you can pretty much see at the level of the cockpit), I was really amazed. This existed in 1966??!!!
For anyone who happens to come to the Coliseum in LA for USC football game, you should check it out.
I've been there a couple of times. There's a path that snakes under, and the engines are about 12 feet above ground. There's a little higher path in the rear, where you can look more evenly, and you're about 8 feet behind. It's in very good shape and very impressive.
If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend reading Ben Rich's autobiography Skunk Works. Very good book, and a ton more information about their projects with some great pilot excerpts.
My favorite is the SR-71 that had to cut across France, was intercepted by a Mirage fighter and then left it behind in seconds :D
They had some other interesting problems. The big one was that the chines allowed very high angle of attack turns. The result was that you could actually stall your engines without stalling the plane (the engine inputs would blank and you'd lose compression).
That's not a problem you'd have with other planes either because usually the wings would stall first. This is a problem because you don't get an aerodynamic sense of being near the danger zone when things go haywire.
The Blackbird there is an M-21, which has a pylon on the top for launching drones. Though, they do have the cockpit of an SR71 that went off the end of a runway and was totalled.
There's also a Blackbird at Dulles, in the Udvar Hazy Air and Space annex. That one's an SR71.
The concordes are amazing too. They look sooo spindly, until you're right up close to those engines. (and hmm, both museums have concordes too. But the Seattle one lets you walk through the inside.)
> "the Seattle one lets you walk through the inside"
As long as the weather is nice enough. We had to close down if there was either a threat to safety (lightning, ice on the stairs) or a lot of moisture getting inside the aircraft.
As a bonus, you can also walk through Eisenhower's Air Force One aircraft and see a lot of other cool stuff. Apparently in the summer they even open the 747 prototype, one of the 727s, and the Super Connie: http://www.museumofflight.org/airpark
(I used to work in the museum, and later volunteered to monitor those two aircraft. Never got to see inside the 747 though.)
> You'd fly the T-38 every day (for proficiency sake).
> As we took off from there and came back around for a pass, the right engine exploded. We had to dump gas, and set about thirteen acres of Maryland on fire as we did that. That was kind of interesting, just spewing flaming fuel and titanium pieces around.
> The SR-71 had a turning radius of about 100 mi. at that speed (above Mach 3) and altitude.
Also, during his 1st flight after the accident, Eject light went on in the back seat due to electrical issue. Because the backseater cannot see front seat, the backseater momentarily thought the pilot ejected without telling him...
Check out this list of 14 Rules of Management by Kelly Johnson. It was true back then for building fighter jets and it's true now for basic software development projects:
"Johnson's famed "down-to-brass-tacks" management style was summed up by his motto, "Be quick, be quiet, and be on time." He ran Skunk Works by "Kelly's 14 Rules":
The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don't have the books 90 days late, and don't surprise the customer with sudden overruns.
The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.
The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don't duplicate so much inspection.
The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.
The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.
Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.
There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.
Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.
Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised."
Note that Kelly had a 15th rule that he passed on by word of mouth. According to the book "Skunk Works" the 15th rule is: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy.
Got one of these good 'ole birds in the Museum next to Robins AFB in Georgia. They also have the start carts, and even have an engine pulled so you can see the six bypass ducts. They have recently mounted the plane on a stand so it looks like it has just left the runway, headed for the stratosphere....
This is what sometimes makes me wonder if the US Air Force came into contact with alien technology ;). Imagine going to this in just 60 yrs of flight being invented. Incredible, inspiring engineering.
"You would get a couple of sunsets and sunrises, because at those northern latitudes often you would see day to night, and then a terminator line..."
Eh, this would only happen if they were adjusting their vector in like a wave, or their speed, right? It's not like they are shooting around the planet.
And he says England to Russia, so not following the sun. What is he talking about?
edit: reading further i'm having a real hard time believing this shit.
This is what makes the famous "speed check" story about the SR-71 so effective (http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912...).
There is no eye contact or body language possible between the pilot and the communicator in the SR-71. What makes that story so perfect is not just the speed aspect, not just the smugness of the other planes, but the interpersonal relationship between the pilot and his crew member. It's just perfect story-telling.