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I think this story needs to be mentioned (as usual when SR-71 links are posted): http://www.econrates.com/reality/schul.html http://www.econrates.com/reality/sc

• masklinn 11y ago
  And that it and others can be found in the author's book "Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet" which isn't really easy to find in print (though likely cheaper than an original copy of Ignition!) but whose scanned PDF is relatively easy to come by.
• foota 11y ago
  Do yourself a favor, open your browsers dev tools and uncheck the background-image property on the body tag.
  • Bdiem 11y ago
    or display it in a "reading view" (FF: small book icon in the urlbar)
• Gravityloss 11y ago
  I thought this was about the economic rates. $85,000 per flight hour per aircraft and 300 million per year for the fleet in 1990, from wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Initial_retirement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Initi...
  • mikeash 11y ago
    Well, as every pilot knows, what makes an airplane fly isn't Bernoulli's principle or thrust or fuel. What makes an airplane fly is money. Furthermore, there is a pretty direct relationship between the speed at which the airplane flies and the speed at which the money is used (albeit with many confounding factors). So one could say that this really is ultimately about that $85,000/hour cost.
• ckozlowski 11y ago
  I never get tired of reading that one. Thanks for the share. =)
• JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Always a favorite, that one.