This past summer at a family reunion I saw an SR-71 hanging from the ceiling of the Offut Air Base Museum. It was truly wonderful drinking from an open bar under that sucker.

I had a few lines of code on the SR-71. My relatives were impressed.

There are many things which make BC special, but personally I am drawn to it by the digressions.
Just about any time I feel the urge to post a comment on something, and become engaged in the effort of getting my words into some semblance of order, I turn around to find that an entertaining distraction has broken cover and is being pursued around the board. And it is usually much more appealing than whatever it was that I was going to say.

“I responded to the mention of scramjets. For which, yes, we have little test models launching, running for a few seconds, and then blowing up and falling down. Pity. The idea’s only been around since the 1950s, at least.”

Ramjets have been around since the 1950s but scramjets are more recent. Antonio Ferri is regarded as the inventor of the scramjet. A paper Ferri published in 1973 is often cited as the original work on scramjets although someone like Ludwig Prandtl probably could have figured it out back in the 1930s. The main difference between a scramjet and ramjet is the combustion process in a ramjet occurs behind a normal shockwave so it’s subsonic. With a scramjet, the combustion process is behind an oblique shockwave so it’s always supersonic.

Flight testing a scramjet is hard to do. The biggest problems are efficient fuel injection and thermal protection of the air frame. The flight test of the X-43A was of short duration because it really did not have a proper thermal protection system. All they really wanted to do was show that the inlet could get started, not unstart after the combustion process got under way and positive thrust could actually be produced. This was demonstrated and everyone came away from the X-43A tests convinced that Antonio Ferri’s concept actually worked (too bad Ferri didn’t live to see it himself).

By the way, Antonio Ferri had an interesting life. It’s worth it to google his biography.

Formula:

a) Raise the deficit so high that there will be insufficient money left to fund the military. Then use cost as the reason to reduce the technological advantage our military has over other nations. In the name of international cooperation, renege on agreements with our best friends and allies.

b) Devalue the dollar so that currency speculators will profit and the US economy will become less central to the rest of the world.

c) Make as many citizens as possible dependent on governmental programs. Create bureaucracies that have little accountability and less supervision and then staff them with cronies.

d) Undermine the concept of citizenship.

e) Appoint Justices and Judges who will subordinate American Constitutional values for international norms.

Sounds like a plan.

Is there anything in any discussion of military budgets that would indicate that Buraq Hussein is increasing any budgets for any form of SDI? In fact, every phase is on the budgetary chopping block. What we were talking about, and starting to fund, will be better than systems being talked about but never funded or built. And no, Obama cannot be trusted to do anything positive for the security of the United States. And a whole lot of people around the world are going to end up dying because of him.

Subotai Bahadur

my guess is that the interceptors/radar installation were as much about getting an infrastructural foothold in the old Soviet domain as anything else. several things suggest the USA military industrial complex is well-aware that the present government of russia intends to reassert itself overtly over its former sphere of inluence to the exclusion of nato/usa, but it has been politically difficult to do so thus far. (1) first reorganize russia, then (2) allow the world to adjust, (3) take advantage of your invisibility, (4) provoke a major crisis, and (5) manage the ensuing strategic reorganization in such a way that the dispersed resources of the West force it to accept otherwise unpalatable things – e.g. georgian invasion. physical assets provide an ‘objective’ basis from which USA could grow in former Warsaw Pact. perhaps the most reasonable, painless, diplomatically palatable way of maintaining the neutrality of former Warsaw Pact states is to (1) slowly increase the visible power and prestige of Moscow while (2) keeping everyone else (USA) out (e.g. via crises in the Islamic world), until it appears natural that so powerful and large a state as the resurgent russia has exclusive claim to influence Bulgaria, etc. Byelorussia and Russia already/still maintain a formalized “Union of Russia and Belarus.” I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the kernal from which a new USSR will bloom.

but of course iran does have icbm’s (they are russia’s client) as they proved with the “satellite launch.” whether they made/make it themselves or not, it is also reasonably likely they already have some nuclear warheads just as insurance for russia’s nuclear energy “investment.” after all, they can’t bank on a deal if mossad’s going to figure out what’s up before the concrete dries. yossef bodansky claims russia sold iran a few nukes in the early 90s, which was the beginning of russia/iran’s strategic relationship. who knows, but it sounds plausible for sure. and of course a couple 9/11 hijackers DID go through Iran on their way to USA…

“Hey excellent Wikipedia article on the D-21, I didn’t know most of that, OK I didn’t know any of that!”

I actually had the opportunity to get my hands on a D-21 when I was last at NASA Dryden a few years ago. There were 3 or 4 of them there (old pieces of junk left out in the rain). I also saw an old SR-71 there that was falling apart (sad to see). I presume it has since been hauled off to a museum. There was some casual talk about retrofitting a D-21 with a rocket motor and doing something funky with it. Unfortunately it was found out that there was lots of asbestos in the D-21′s structure (the D-21s were made in the early 1960s before people got freaked-out about asbestos). Of course, dealing with asbestos is no big thing (just keep it wet). However the bureaucratic issues from the safety Nazis would have been intolerable so the idea never got past the idle conversation phase.

Assuming Obama can be trusted to follow through with this…

It does seem like a smarter strategy. Mobile, not static defenses, that can be re-positioned quickly.

Someone pls explain why its not better?