Magus said: That's not under its own power though. It hits Mach 25 when "powered" by gravity on its way back down.
You need to be Mach 25 in order to achieve orbital velocity. That's what the Shuttle does. Achieve Orbital Velocity. It's pulling about 4 gs on it's way up and takes about 10 minutes for it to get up to that speed, but it does actually go that fast under it's own power.
Steak said: it does actually go that fast under it's own power.
Isn't a space shuttle more of a technicality, I mean I could be wrong but isnt it more or less the giant rockets its strapped to and later ejects that gets it going?
Dear lord, why exactly do we have so many experts here on danbooru!
I bet, if I would upload a comic strip, where one Touhou-character mentions Schroedinger´s cat, I´ll eventually get a full explanation of Schrödinger equation! IN ALL THREE VERSIONS!
DocAstaroth said: Dear lord, why exactly do we have so many experts here on danbooru!
I bet, if I would upload a comic strip, where one Touhou-character mentions Schroedinger´s cat, I´ll eventually get a full explanation of Schrödinger equation! IN ALL THREE VERSIONS!
It's because we're all nerds. That, and the SR-71 is fucking cool. Thus, you can expect nerds to know a lot about it.
There is more similarity here then just speed. The SR-71 carried a large camera that was capable of resolving an object the size of a gold ball from 80,000 feet.
Dr_Z said: There is more similarity here then just speed. The SR-71 carried a large camera that was capable of resolving an object the size of a gold ball from 80,000 feet.
Or, to be more direct, it was a spy plane designed specifically for the purposes of being capable of taking pictures of hostile nations from such a hight, speed, and distance that the target of the unwanted spying couldn't do anything about it, even if they were aware of the blackhawk's presence. (That camera was side-mounted so as to let the plane fly outside the borders of the target nation's airspace while still taking pictures so that there could be no complaints about violating airspace or legal justification for shooting it down the way that the U-2 would generate.)
For the people talking about how the space shuttle needs help to get itself off the ground, I would point out that the SR-71 was built with the idea that its fuselage would expand in flight in mind, and as such, leaked fuel like a sieve on the ground. It would be fueled immediately before takeoff with just enough fuel to get it off the ground, then have to almost immediately get a mid-air refueling. A flight of an SR-71 would involve something like a half-dozen mid-air refuelings - which is exactly why it was retired, the thing went through tremendous amounts of fuel and maintenance, and for expensive as satellites are, they were nevertheless much cheaper than running an SR-71.
