That's the very first thing I thought, too!

This in a country that has actually had Land Sharks.

Was the one linked to it after it was done. "Nipplecopter!"

Gonna have that damned song stuck in my head all day now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

Quote: "Designed by North American Aviation in the late 1950s, the Valkyrie was a large six-engined aircraft able to fly Mach 3+ at an altitude of 70,000 feet"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25

Quote: "The MiG-25 was theoretically capable of a maximum speed of Mach 3+ and a ceiling of 90,000 ft (27,000 m). Its high speed was problematic: although sufficient thrust was available to reach Mach 3.2, a limit of Mach 2.8 had to be imposed as the turbines tended to overspeed and overheat at higher speeds, possibly damaging them beyond repair"

Mig 25's couldn't handle doing Mach 3 for very long because their engines were made for unmanned drones, not because the airframe couldn't handle it.

What you quote from wikipedia about the SR-71 is what we are TOLD about it. The reality is that the friction heating at Mach 3+ is not a huge hurdle. The XB-70 had no extensive provisions for it. If you read more about the '71 you'll find out about the great lengths that the engineers went to to keep the skin of the aircraft and its internal systems cool- none of those are needed at Mach 3 or even 3.2, as shown by the MiG-25 being capable of 3.2 without anything unusual.

The cones on the SR-71 were there to take the '71 past what a turbojet engine can do. Read what you just posted. It bypassed the engine and went straight to the afterburners. Engineers solved the ramjet problem in the 50's man, they just stuck a jet engine in the middle of it. The maximum speed wasn't limited by the compression as quoted, it was INCREASED by it. Do you really think that the official documentation is going to say "Oh yeah we designed the engine to surpass mach 3 by a long shot"? No, because the official top speed is classified.

Now, you said name 3, and I'm going to name a plane that the SR-71 has more technology in common with than anything I've mentioned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

As an experimental plane it used heat treating with a nickel alloy to handle the speeds. How fast you say? Mach 6.72. This is the only plane I've mentioned that had to had heat treating for the fuselage like the '71 did, and it went Mach 6+

So, before you call my theory about the top speed of the '71 /nonsense/ do your homework instead of just quoting from wikipedia and going "see! it says so!"

Actually, the U2 can't be replaced so easily. Yes, they could *make* one but it took a huge team to make the U2 work, and Kelly Johnson was no dummy with its design. The problem is that you have to justify spending the time and money and materials to make a new one that works so much better that its worth the expenditure.

Oh, and the SR-71 was engineered for somewhere around Mach 5 or 6. Its stated top speed was Mach 3, but lots of planes can do Mach 3, and they don't need all the fancy stuff the '71 did. And, I talked to a retired traffic controller who once saw a '71 light up a civilian transponder so traffic could be vectored around it (it had an emergency apparently), they clocked it around 4000mph. Kelly Johnson wouldn't authorize the throttles to be opened full, he wasn't sure what would happen. Some neat stuff about the blackbird.

I'm glad I'm not a tech living in that area. I can imagine the calls. "My new Dell won't get on the Super WiFi, it says it has WiFi!"

One more way to muddy the waters, nice job FCC. As it is I get calls from people wanting to get help hooking their new wireless mouse up to WiFi.

You just have to Zoom, then Enhance.

Yes, and they suck. BTDT. I just got a VPS at myhosting.com, so far so good. More costly, but you get what you pay for!