#Linear Aerospike SR Experiment

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Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) by NASA on The Commons Via Flickr: The NASA SR-71A successfully completed its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (now NASA Armstrong), Edwards, California on March 4, 1998. During a cold flow flight, gaseous helium and liquid nitrogen were cycled through the linear aerospike engine to check the engine's plumbing system for leaks and to check the engine operating characteristics. Cold-flow tests had to be accomplished successfully before firing the rocket engine experiment in flight. The SR-71 flew for one hour and fifty-seven minutes, reaching a maximum speed of Mach 1.58 on this flight. Learn more about the LASRE Project flights in 1997 and 1998 NASA Media Usage Guidelines Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas Image Number: EC98-44440-4 Date: March 4, 1998

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[usafphantom2]

"A NASA SR-71 refuels with an Edwards Air Force Base KC-135 during the first flight of the NASA/Rocketdyne/ Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE). […] Date Created: 1997-10-31"

📷���� images.nasa.gov/details/EC97-4… 👁‍🗨 @NASAhistory

@MassiasThanos via X

[aerospaceage]

LASRE Pod Matting to SR-71 This is a rear/side view of the Linear Aerospike SR Experiment (LASRE) pod on NASA SR-71, tail number 844. This photo was taken during the fit-check of the pod on February 15, 1996, at Lockheed Martin Skunkworks in Palmdale, California. The LASRE experiment was designed to provide in-flight data to help Lockheed Martin evaluate the aerodynamic characteristics and the handling of the SR-71 linear aerospike experiment configuration. The goal of the project was to provide in-flight data to help Lockheed Martin validate the computational predictive tools it was using to determine the aerodynamic performance of a future reusable launch vehicle. The joint NASA, Rocketdyne (now part of Boeing), and Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) completed seven initial research flights at Dryden Flight Research Center. Image #: EC96-43419-25 Date: February 15, 1996

[worldofaviation]

The NASA SR-71A successfully completed its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California on March 4, 1998. https://www.instagram.com/p/BzaYKDwoAg4/?igshid=wi3wc2k50fvn

[photoyage]

(October 31, 1997) A NASA SR-71 successfully completed its first flight October 31, 1997 as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. The SR-71 took off at 8:31 a.m. PST. The aircraft flew for one hour and fifty minutes, reaching a maximum speed of Mach 1.2 before landing at Edwards at 10:21 a.m. PST, successfully validating the SR-71/linear aerospike experiment configuration. Image # : EC97-44295-108

[shinji285]

Rear side view of the Linear Aerospike SR Experiment (LASRE) pod on an SR-71 during a fit-check of the pod on February 15, 1996.

[scentedkryptoniteballoon]

Lockheed SR-71 NASA 844 during LASRE aerospike testing - 1998 Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment

[coolspacepics]

NASA's SR-71A Blackbird jet "dumps water after" completing "its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE)" on 4 March 1998 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, United States of America. [3039 x 2430]spaceporn

[dreampoetryvisions]

NASA's SR-71A Blackbird jet "dumps water after" completing "its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE)" on 4 March 1998 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, United States of America. [3039 x 2430] via /r/spaceporn https://ift.tt/2z0PMro

[courtneytincher]

Why the Air Force Gave Up on the SR-71 (The Fastest Plane Ever)

Said the former astronaut, “The termination of the SR-71 was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday’s historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our short-sighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance.”​The SR-71, unofficially known as the Blackbird, was a long-range, advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft. The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., in January 1966.No SR-71 has ever been lost or damaged due to hostile action: in fact its incredible speed enabled it to gather intelligence in a matter of a few seconds while streaking across unfriendly skies. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour.Despite the aircraft’s incredible flight characteristics, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) retired its fleet of SR-71s on Jan. 26, 1990, because of a decreasing defense budget, high costs of operation and availability of sophisticated spy satellites.“General Larry Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, staged a one-man campaign on Capitol  Hill to kill the program entirely,” Ben Rich wrote in his book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed. “General Welch thought sophisticated spy satellites made the SR-71 a disposable luxury. Welch had headed the Strategic Air Command and was partial to its priorities. He wanted to use SR-71 refurbishment funding for development of the B-2 bomber. He was quoted by columnist Rowland Evans as saying, ‘The Blackbird can’t fire a gun and doesn’t carry a bomb, and I don’t want it.’ Then the general went on the Hill and claimed to certain powerful committee chairmen that he could operate a wing of fifteen to twenty [F-15E] fighter-bombers with what it cost him to fly a single SR-71.That claim was bogus. So were claims by SAC generals that the SR-71 cost $400 million annually to run. The actual cost was about $260 million.”Both Welch and SAC commander General John Chain testified before Congress that the SR-71 should go, and so it did.As Rich so aptly reflected, “a general would always prefer commanding a large fleet of conventional fighters or bombers that provides high visibility and glory. By contrast, buying into Blackbird would mean deep secrecy, small numbers, and no limelight.”Blackbird operations, except training flights, were officially terminated in November 1989, having been eliminated from the FY1990 Defense Department budget.On Mar. 6, 1990, one Blackbird famously set a series of world speed records on its ‘retirement flight.’ The SR-71 with tail number 64-17972 was flown from California to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (NASM) Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, where it would eventually go on display. In the process, it set the official National Aeronautic Association coast-to-coast speed record of 2,086 miles in one hour and seven minutes, averaging 2,124.5 mph. It made the 311-mile St. Louis-to-Cincinnati leg in less than nine minutes, averaging 2,176.08 mph.As told by Bill Yenne in his book Area 51 Black Jets, within a few months of this much-publicized flight, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army had occupied Kuwait and the U.S. was involved in the Desert Shield buildup that culminated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991. During that conflict, many operational commanders, including General Norman Schwarzkopf, lamented the absence of expedited reconnaissance that the SR-71 might have contributed.Mounting concerns about the situations in world trouble spots from the Middle East to North Korea led Congress to reconsider the reactivation of the SR-71. In 1993, Admiral Richard Macke, director of the joint staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that “from the operator’s perspective, what I need is something that will not give me just a spot in time but will give me a track of what is happening. When we are trying to find out if the Serbs are taking arms, moving tanks or artillery into Bosnia, we can get a picture of them stacked up on the Serbian side of the bridge. We do not know whether they then went on to move across that bridge. We need the [reconnaissance information] that a tactical, an SR-71, a U-2, or an unmanned vehicle of some sort, will give us, in addition to, not in replacement of, the ability of the satellites to go around and check not only that spot but a lot of other spots around the world for us. It is the integration of strategic and tactical.”In its FY1994 appropriations, Congress authorized a reinstatement of funding to permit a revival of part of the SR-71 fleet. By that time, many of the twenty surviving SR-71s were being prepped for museum displays, but at least a half dozen were in storage at Palmdale or flying research missions with NASA.The USAF moved too slowly on the path to SR-71 reactivation, and in October 1997, using a line-item veto, President Bill Clinton deleted the funding. The Blackbird was permanently grounded by the US Air Force in 1998, leaving just two at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB.One of the last NASA missions for the SR-71 was the Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) series conducted in 1997 and 1998. The object was to study aerodynamic performance of lifting bodies combined with aerospike engines such as would have been used in the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works X-33, the demonstrator for the conceptual VentureStar single-stage-to-orbit reusable spaceplane. The latter program was abandoned by NASA in 2001 but pursued by Lockheed Martin thereafter.In signing off any discussion of the Blackbird’s demise, Americans are left with the words that Senator John Glenn spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate on the day after the 1990 “retirement flight.”Said the former astronaut, “The termination of the SR-71 was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday’s historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our short-sighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance.”This article by Dario Leone originally appeared on The Aviation Geek Club in 2018.Image: DVIDS.This article first appeared last month and is being republished due to reader interest.

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Said the former astronaut, “The termination of the SR-71 was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday’s historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our short-sighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance.”​The SR-71, unofficially known as the Blackbird, was a long-range, advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft. The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., in January 1966.No SR-71 has ever been lost or damaged due to hostile action: in fact its incredible speed enabled it to gather intelligence in a matter of a few seconds while streaking across unfriendly skies. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour.Despite the aircraft’s incredible flight characteristics, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) retired its fleet of SR-71s on Jan. 26, 1990, because of a decreasing defense budget, high costs of operation and availability of sophisticated spy satellites.“General Larry Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, staged a one-man campaign on Capitol  Hill to kill the program entirely,” Ben Rich wrote in his book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed. “General Welch thought sophisticated spy satellites made the SR-71 a disposable luxury. Welch had headed the Strategic Air Command and was partial to its priorities. He wanted to use SR-71 refurbishment funding for development of the B-2 bomber. He was quoted by columnist Rowland Evans as saying, ‘The Blackbird can’t fire a gun and doesn’t carry a bomb, and I don’t want it.’ Then the general went on the Hill and claimed to certain powerful committee chairmen that he could operate a wing of fifteen to twenty [F-15E] fighter-bombers with what it cost him to fly a single SR-71.That claim was bogus. So were claims by SAC generals that the SR-71 cost $400 million annually to run. The actual cost was about $260 million.”Both Welch and SAC commander General John Chain testified before Congress that the SR-71 should go, and so it did.As Rich so aptly reflected, “a general would always prefer commanding a large fleet of conventional fighters or bombers that provides high visibility and glory. By contrast, buying into Blackbird would mean deep secrecy, small numbers, and no limelight.”Blackbird operations, except training flights, were officially terminated in November 1989, having been eliminated from the FY1990 Defense Department budget.On Mar. 6, 1990, one Blackbird famously set a series of world speed records on its ‘retirement flight.’ The SR-71 with tail number 64-17972 was flown from California to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (NASM) Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, where it would eventually go on display. In the process, it set the official National Aeronautic Association coast-to-coast speed record of 2,086 miles in one hour and seven minutes, averaging 2,124.5 mph. It made the 311-mile St. Louis-to-Cincinnati leg in less than nine minutes, averaging 2,176.08 mph.As told by Bill Yenne in his book Area 51 Black Jets, within a few months of this much-publicized flight, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army had occupied Kuwait and the U.S. was involved in the Desert Shield buildup that culminated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991. During that conflict, many operational commanders, including General Norman Schwarzkopf, lamented the absence of expedited reconnaissance that the SR-71 might have contributed.Mounting concerns about the situations in world trouble spots from the Middle East to North Korea led Congress to reconsider the reactivation of the SR-71. In 1993, Admiral Richard Macke, director of the joint staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that “from the operator’s perspective, what I need is something that will not give me just a spot in time but will give me a track of what is happening. When we are trying to find out if the Serbs are taking arms, moving tanks or artillery into Bosnia, we can get a picture of them stacked up on the Serbian side of the bridge. We do not know whether they then went on to move across that bridge. We need the [reconnaissance information] that a tactical, an SR-71, a U-2, or an unmanned vehicle of some sort, will give us, in addition to, not in replacement of, the ability of the satellites to go around and check not only that spot but a lot of other spots around the world for us. It is the integration of strategic and tactical.”In its FY1994 appropriations, Congress authorized a reinstatement of funding to permit a revival of part of the SR-71 fleet. By that time, many of the twenty surviving SR-71s were being prepped for museum displays, but at least a half dozen were in storage at Palmdale or flying research missions with NASA.The USAF moved too slowly on the path to SR-71 reactivation, and in October 1997, using a line-item veto, President Bill Clinton deleted the funding. The Blackbird was permanently grounded by the US Air Force in 1998, leaving just two at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB.One of the last NASA missions for the SR-71 was the Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) series conducted in 1997 and 1998. The object was to study aerodynamic performance of lifting bodies combined with aerospike engines such as would have been used in the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works X-33, the demonstrator for the conceptual VentureStar single-stage-to-orbit reusable spaceplane. The latter program was abandoned by NASA in 2001 but pursued by Lockheed Martin thereafter.In signing off any discussion of the Blackbird’s demise, Americans are left with the words that Senator John Glenn spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate on the day after the 1990 “retirement flight.”Said the former astronaut, “The termination of the SR-71 was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday’s historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our short-sighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance.”This article by Dario Leone originally appeared on The Aviation Geek Club in 2018.Image: DVIDS.This article first appeared last month and is being republished due to reader interest.

August 17, 2019 at 09:00AM via IFTTT

[usafphantom2]

SR-71 on Ramp with Flight Crew

Looking more like astronauts than aircraft pilots, members of a fully-suited NASA research flight crew is seen here alongside an SR-71 aircraft. Two SR-71A's were initially loaned to NASA from the Air Force for high-speed, high-altitude aeronautical research. The SR-71As plus an SR- 71B pilot trainer aircraft were based at NASA's Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility (later, Dryden Flight Research Center), Edwards, California during the decade of the 1990s. Two SR-71 aircraft have been used by NASA as testbeds for high-speed and high-altitude aeronautical research. The aircraft, an SR-71A and an SR-71B pilot trainer aircraft, have been based here at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. They were transferred to NASA after the U.S. Air Force program was cancelled. As research platforms, the aircraft can cruise at Mach 3 for more than one hour. For thermal experiments, this can produce heat soak temperatures of over 600 degrees Fahrenheit (F). This operating environment makes these aircraft excellent platforms to carry out research and experiments in a variety of areas -- aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, thermal protection materials, high-speed and high-temperature instrumentation, atmospheric studies, and sonic boom characterization. The SR-71 was used in a program to study ways of reducing sonic booms or over pressures that are heard on the ground, much like sharp thunderclaps, when an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound. Data from this Sonic Boom Mitigation Study could eventually lead to aircraft designs that would reduce the "peak" overpressures of sonic booms and minimize the startling affect they produce on the ground. One of the first major experiments to be flown in the NASA SR-71 program was a laser air data collection system. It used laser light instead of air pressure to produce airspeed and attitude reference data, such as angle of attack and sideslip, which are normally obtained with small tubes and vanes extending into the airstream. One of Dryden's SR-71s was used for the Linear Aerospike Rocket Engine, or LASRE Experiment. Another earlier project consisted of a series of flights using the SR-71 as a science camera platform for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. An upward-looking ultraviolet video camera placed in the SR-71's nosebay studied a variety of celestial objects in wavelengths that are blocked to ground-based astronomers. Earlier in its history, Dryden had a decade of past experience at sustained speeds above Mach 3. Two YF-12A aircraft and an SR-71 designated as a YF-12C were flown at the center between December 1969 and November 1979 in a joint NASA/USAF program to learn more about the capabilities and limitations of high-speed, high-altitude flight. The YF-12As were prototypes of a planned interceptor aircraft based on a design that later evolved into the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft. Dave Lux was the NASA SR-71 project manger for much of the decade of the 1990s, followed by Steve Schmidt. Developed for the USAF as reconnaissance aircraft more than 30 years ago, SR-71s are still the world's fastest and highest-flying production aircraft. The aircraft can fly at speeds of more than 2,200 miles per hour (Mach 3+, or more than three times the speed of sound) and at altitudes of over 85,000 feet. The Lockheed Skunk Works (now Lockheed Martin) built the original SR-71 aircraft. Each aircraft is 107.4 feet long, has a wingspan of 55.6 feet, and is 18.5 feet high (from the ground to the top of the rudders, when parked). Gross takeoff weight is about 140,000 pounds, including a possible fuel weight of 80,280 pounds. The airframes are built almost entirely of titanium and titanium alloys to withstand heat generated by sustained Mach 3 flight. Aerodynamic control surfaces consist of all-moving vertical tail surfaces, ailerons on the outer wings, and elevators on the trailing edges between the engine exhaust nozzles. The two SR-71s at Dryden have been assigned the following NASA tail numbers: NASA 844 (A model), military serial 61-7980 and NASA 831 (B model)

@Habubrats71 via X

[saltpeanutslive]

NASA's SR-71A Blackbird jet "dumps water after" completing "its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE)" on 4 March 1998 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, United States of America. [3039 x 2430]

Original source. (Via r/spaceporn.)

[loveeveryoneoftenblog]

NASA's SR-71A Blackbird jet "dumps water after" completing "its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE)" on 4 March 1998 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, United States of America. [3039 x 2430] via /r/spaceporn https://ift.tt/2z0PMro

[spiralwizardtowerlibrarystation]

NASA's SR-71A Blackbird jet "dumps water after" completing "its first cold flow flight as part of the NASA/Rocketdyne/Lockheed Martin Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE)" on 4 March 1998 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, United States of America. [3039 x 2430] via /r/spaceporn https://ift.tt/2z0PMro