A-12 Oxcart

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I'll post this here, because almost all of it is one of the A-12 pilots talking about everything it takes to get an airplane where it needs to be:

materials scientists
fuel chemists
ladies' lingerie manufacturers
camera makers
and everybody who gets an aircraft from A back to A again in one piece

from back in the day when aircraft were built up to a spec, not down to a price.

A-12 pilots referred to the SR-71 Blackbird as the "family model".

I found the speaker thoroughly entertaining.

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdxpqqsHl8[/bbvideo]

[Cacophonix]

Look forward to watching that as soon as I have made myself a cup of tea Fox3WheresMyBanana... thank you for posting.

I listened to a talk by this chap on the subject of the family model at Duxford some years back. Fascinating and he had some trenchant views on the curtailment of the programme as well...

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ao81SC1djE[/bbvideo]

Caco

[Cacophonix]

I read a biography of Kelly Johnson and the many amazing aircraft he produced and one of the saddest bits in the extraordinary tale is when he was invited back to the Skunk Works after he had retired and he simply couldn't recognise anybody or any of his aircraft because he was in the final stages of dementia...

His aircraft stand in memory of a great man.

Caco

[Cacophonix]

But sad to say President Eisenhower met with Khrushchev at the time of the shoot down <<Gary Powers>> and told them we would not fly manned airplanes over Russia anymore! So now what the hell do you do what an A12? So they continued..!

Absolutely superb man and speaker...

Oxcart! Who says the Americans don't do irony.

Caco

[Cacophonix]

Perkin Elmer. Kodak, of course, are non est although I do have a copy of Team Zebra , Kodak - Team Zebra given to me by some zealous manager many years back as an incentive to use Kodak as an example of how a flexible company could reinvent itself. The bloke was German though so I guess I have said all I need to say about how some perspectives are not always to be trusted...

From Wiki

Perkin-Elmer was an American optical design and consulting company founded in 1937 by Richard S. Perkin and Charles W. Elmer.[1] The two met in the 1930s and shared a common interest in astronomy, leading them to go into the optics business together. the company was incorporated in New York in 1939. In 1944 the company also began working in the field of analytical instruments. Starting in 1954, the business operated in Germany as Bodenseewerk Perkin-Elmer GmbH.

Perkin-Elmer designed the optical systems for the classified KH-9 Hexagon reconnaissance satellites, commonly known as Big Birds, that were used by the United States from 1971-1986. The satellites contained a film camera with a 1.5 m, f/3.0 telephoto lens and a secondary, lower resolution film-based mapping camera. After exposure, the film was jettisoned from the satellite in a reentry vehicle that returned the film to Earth for processing. <<the bsis for the plot in Alastair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra>>

During the 1960s - 1980s the company designed and built a variety of optical and lens systems for military use including weapons sighting systems, gun cameras, night reconnaissance gear, and camera systems. They provided lenses for the camera systems used in U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes including huge 36 inch f/4.0 lenses.[2] Strange Perkin-Elmer lenses from this era are frequently found from military surplus vendors and online auction websites.

Ellis Betensky worked for Perkin-Elmer as their senior optical designer prior to forming his own company, OPCON Associates. OPCON's first major project was as a design consultant to Ponder & Best to design their innovative Vivitar Series 1 lenses. Perkin-Elmer was chosen to manufacture the more complex optical designs due to Betensky's past associations with the company. Most of Vivitar Series 1 lenses were manufactured by traditional Japanese lens manufacturers but two, the 600mm f/8 and 800mm f/11 Solid Catadioptric lenses relied on the advanced optical materials and designs that Perkin-Elmer specialized in.

Perkin-Elmer sold the 600mm f/8[3] and 800mm f/11 Catadioptric lenses under their own name as well. These were identical to the OPCON-designed Vivitar Series 1 lenses that Perkin-Elmer manufactured. There is also known to be a Perkin-Elmer 680mm f/12 compact catadioptric lens.

In the late 1970s Perkin-Elmer won a NASA contract to build the optical components of the Hubble Space Telescope, a job that became the company's most famous debacle. Technicians at the company miscalibrated a null corrector, resulting the creation of a primary mirror for the telescope that had significant spherical aberration. A problem that was not discovered until the telescope was in orbit. NASA launched a repair mission that applied corrections to the secondary mirror, leaving the larger, faulty primary mirror in place. A subsequent NASA investigation criticized Perkin-Elmer's management, noting that they had disregarded quality guidelines and ignored test data which showed the mirror to be faulty.

On 28 May, 1999 Perkin-Elmer merged with EG&G, Inc to form PerkinElmer. The new company diversified into a wide range of technology businesses including health, environmental analysis, medical imaging, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, biotechnology, specialty lighting and sensors.

Polishing of Hubble's primary mirror begins at Perkin-Elmer corporation, Danbury, Connecticut, May 1979. The engineer pictured is Dr. Martin Yellin, an optical engineer working for Perkin-Elmer on the project.
Perkin-Elmer's Danbury Optical System unit[12] was commissioned to build the optical components of the Hubble Space Telescope. The construction of the main mirror began in 1979 and completed in 1981. The polishing process ran over budget and behind schedule, producing significant friction with NASA. Due to a miscalibrated null corrector, the primary mirror was also found to have a significant spherical aberration after reaching orbit on STS-31. Perkin-Elmer's own calculations and measurements revealed the primary mirror's surface discrepancies, but the company chose to withhold that data from NASA. A NASA investigation heavily criticized Perkin-Elmer for management failings, disregarding written quality guidelines, and ignoring test data that revealed the miscalibration. Corrective optics were installed on the telescope during the first Hubble service and repair mission STS-61. The correction, Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, was applied entirely to the secondary mirror and replaced existing instrumentation; the aberration of the primary mirror remained uncorrected.

The company agreed to pay US $15 million, essentially forgoing its fees in polishing the mirror, to avoid a threatened liability lawsuit under the False Claims Act by the Federal government. Hughes Aircraft which acquired the Danbury Optical System unit one month after the launch of the telescope, paid $10 million. The Justice Department asserted that the companies should have known about the flawed testing. Trade group Aerospace Industries Association protested when concerns were raised in the aerospace industry that aerospace companies might be held liable for failed equipment.

Perkin-Elmer built the optical systems for the KH-9 Hexagon series of spy satellites at a facility in Danbury, Connecticut.

In the 1950s, an aerial panoramic camera lens was capable of recording the entire state of Pennsylvania in two flyovers, with resolution that enabled one to count the autos on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Caco

[Cacophonix]

The advent of the so called keyhole satellites in the 60's and now the ability to parking extremely powerful charge coupled arrays of lenses in different geostationary orbits and amalgamate these electronically certainly means that satellites can immediately do a lot of what the A-12 or the SR-71 could do but the flexibility of being able to fly an asset into areas that aare not covered, on spec., as it were is still huge.

It is not for nothing that the U2 is still flying and no doubt there is a SR-71 replacement, albeit temporary, flying as we speak, and other stuff is in the pipeline as well. The chaps that piloted the A-12 and SR-71 were probably a one of a kind because I doubt that many operational missions in the future will be manned!

Amazing pilots and very brave men.

Lockheed Martin's famed Skunk Works has finally unveiled the long-awaited successor to the SR-71 Blackbird. Aviation Week and Space Technology's Guy Norris pulled the covers off the project that Lockheed Martin is simply calling the SR-72. The new airplane will be roughly the same size as the record-setting Blackbird, but will be able to fly twice as fast as the jet that still holds the speed records.

The new spy plane will be capable of Mach 6 cruise speeds, making it the first hypersonic aircraft to enter service should it be produced. Only the rocket-powered North American X-15 was able to regularly fly those speeds, and the three examples built were used for research. The SR-71 Blackbird is legendary in aviation circles for its Mach 3 capabilities, and different iterations served as a spy plane for 35 years until its retirement in 1998. It still holds several records, including a flight from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. in 64 minutes, 20 seconds.

The new SR-72 has long been rumored and debated, and is part of the U.S. Air Force's plan for hypersonic capabilities that will allow fast reaction for gathering intelligence around the world. A Mach 6 airplane fills the gap between current surveillance aircraft that can loiter for long periods of time, but don't have the ability to transit to a new area quickly. The SR-72 is also expected to have optional strike capabilities, according to Aviation Week.

The key to the new airplane, as it was with the SR-71, will be the engines. Lockheed Martin told Aviation Week the company has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne to build an air breathing engine that combines both a traditional turbine and a scramjet to deliver the Mach 6 performance.

Normal turbine jet engines have problems operating at speeds beyond Mach 2. The original SR-71 used a complicated system of a movable nose cone on the engine, along with vents that prevented shockwaves from interfering with the flow, and slowed the air down enough so that it could be ingested by the engine. Though "unstarts" were a regular problem for Blackbird pilots, and caused problems throughout the life of the airplane.

The new SR-72 will use a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) that will employ the turbine engine at lower speeds, and use a scramjet at higher speeds. A scramjet engine is designed to operate at hypersonic velocities by compressing the air through a carefully designed inlet, but needs to be traveling supersonic before it is practical to begin with. So far research projects from NASA, the Air Force and other Pentagon entities have not been able to solve the problem of transitioning from the subsonic flight regime, through hypersonic flight with a single aircraft.

Lockheed Martin told Aviation Week it has found a way to use existing turbine engines, and by lowering the operating speed of the scramjet, make a transition to hypersonic speeds possible.The aerospace company says it may have a scaled demonstrator of the SR-72 technology flying by 2023. That airplane would be smaller, about the size of the current F-22 fighter and would be optionally piloted. The SR-72 could enter service by 2030.

https://www.wired.com/2013/11/lockheed-martin-sr-72/

SR.JPG (34.08 KiB) Viewed 559 times

Caco

[Cacophonix]

I have two pairs of David Clarke headsets and if anybody had ever mentioned that the company had started out in textiles (ladies undergarments, bras and the like) I would have said they were joking. The stuff you learn on ops-normal.

I note I am the lone idiot jabbering away here. Well I will continue to do so, so interesting was the that video posted by Fox3WheresMyBanana.

Radar reflective shock diamonds, caesium in the fuel to reduce the plume return... (fantastic stuff)...

Caco

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Caco I am happy with you posting away on this thread :never knew that ladies underwear was so important in aviation!

[Cacophonix]

Caco I am happy with you posting away on this thread :never knew that ladies underwear was so important in aviation!

Neither did I Mrs Ex-Ascot! It is usually the lack of ladies underwear that excites male pilots I guess (vide, Slasher)!

I might have been less surprised if they had said the drag chute had used the same nylon material as knickers or something but to learn Dave Clark started out in textiles was a surprise. Apparently they are still a primary contractor in the manufacturer of space suits as well.

Caco

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I recall assisting a good friend of mine, a supply officer, into a 'g' suit for her backseat ride. Halfway through the zipping up she exclaimed:

"Jesus, I thought women's underwear was complicated!"

[ricardian]

The OXCART story with Frank Murray