Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4570 mails)

[James Knott <james.knott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Carlos E. R. wrote:
> 
> The Thursday 2005-11-24 at 20:10 -0500, James Knott wrote:
> 
>>>>>> Having a long history with document imaging and storage systems, I ended up 
>>>>>> one time in a discussion about five years ago with one of the guys who was 
>>>>>> maintaining the records for the U-2 project, which at the time was still 
>>>>>> ongoing. 
>>>> Sorry, I don't know what U-2 is :-?
>>> You mean you've never heard of U2 or BONO???
> 
> A musical group, but not my kind of music :-p
> 
> I didn't know what was u-2 in the context we were talking, I didn't 
> remember the plane.
> 
>>> Actually, the U2 is a spy plane first built by Lockheed, back in the
>>> '50, with later versions still flying for research as well.
> 
> I heard that it leaks a lot of oil while at "low" altitudes, till it gets 
> to the altitude and temperature for which it was designed. Funny I 
> remember that.
> 

You're thinking about the SR-71 Blackbird, whic was an even higher
flying and faster plane, that was built in the early 60s, after the U2
became vulnerable to missiles.  It could fly at well over 85,000 feet
and more than 3x the speed of sound, whereas the U2 was subsonic.
Incidenatally, it should have been called the RS-71, but President
Lyndon Johnson goofed, calling it the SR-71 and no one wanted to correct
him.  So all the designers had to go back and rename all their blue
prints etc. Also, it was fuel (specially formulated for high
temperatures) that the plane leaked, as there are still no sealing
materials that can withstand the heat.

http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71