https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-11_Tiger

SR-71 would easily have been able to, they were just too chicken to give it guns and hardpoints like god intended. Cowards.

The Tiger gained the dubious distinction of being the first jet aircraft to shoot itself down.[8][9] On 21 September 1956, during a test-firing of its 20 mm (0.79 in) cannons, pilot Tom Attridge fired two bursts midway through a shallow dive. As the trajectory of the cannon rounds decayed, they ultimately crossed paths with the Tiger as it continued its descent, disabling the aircraft and forcing Attridge to crash-land the aircraft; he survived with a broken leg and multiple broken vertebrae.[10][11]

I'm not sure a weapons system that could be used before it disintegrated from the stresses of the SR-71 accelerating to cruise speed, exists.

It has a weapon: information speed.

They made an interceptor version of the SR-71 called the YF-12. I don't know if it ever entered service though.

• nice
• so it didn't do much "outrun" the bullets, but moved under them as they fell? Still funny and impressive either way.
• "survived with a broken leg and multiple broken vertebrae" - okay, so maybe "funny" in a different way.

That's just because Lockheed never put a gun on The Blackbird.

‘Y’ means it was the second prototype batch after ‘X’. Sometimes the Ys would be modified with the final spec and enter service but typically they would lose the Y designation at that time. For instance the prototype YB-36 entered service as a reconnaissance RB-36A after modifications.

How is that not catching up to them?

FYI if you're unfamiliar with ballistics, as most people never think about it. When a bullet is fired out of a gun, it is dropping downward at the same speed as if you were holding in your hand and just let it go.

People who don't normally shoot rifles never really stop to think about that. The forward velocity doesn't keep the bullet from falling towards the ground any slower. Rifles usually fire the bullet at a slight upward trajectory because of this. So it may climb an inch and a half higher over the first 100 yards before it starts heading towards the ground.

They only built 3 of them.

1 crashed in California in 1971. Another was given to NASA for testing until 1978. The surviving 2 are in museums. Couldn't find any information on whether they saw actual active duty, but they were technically in service in the 1970s.

The also made one with ... a parasite, mini me version of itself.

https://www.museumofflight.org/Exhibits-and-Events/Aircraft/lockheed-m-21-blackbird

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12#M-21

Two, actually.

They made two pairs of the M-21 and D-21.

And yes, that's D for Drone, in 1963.

A nearly hypersonic drone, launched from a Mach 3+ capable mothership, in 1963.

That is possibly the most sci Fi ass looking thing I've seen outside of an 80s b-movie. You know some hyper nerd designer was extremely proud of that

Since he was decreasing in altitude (presumably at approximately a straight diagonal vector) and the bullets were traveling in an arc, I guess the linear distance travelled by the plane is less than that travelled by the bullets?

Either way, I think "out-ran" is appropriate here since the plane was necessarily ahead of the bullet on the horizontal plane since it was hit by the bullets.

I was always a fan of the YF-19

It is quite literally fantastic.

The... the thing is constantly leaking, when it is on the runway, prior to take off.

Because its cruise speed and altitude are such that the surface of it is so heated, that it expands the metal, and stops the leaking.

That is how fucking extreme this thing is.

Now if you want might vote for even more scifi than that?

Behold, the SSTO we could have been building for the last 20 years, if we'd just used the construction method for the fuel tanks that the engineers argued should be used, but couldn't be, because we needed to do all the experimental processes on a single craft, and if they didn't all work, Dick Cheney will cancel the program...

The VentureStar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar

Yep, we built the scaled down mockup of this, the X-33.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33

And the summary that I gave earlier is basically the tl:dr of it.

We could have been working on making these things to replace shuttle. A reusable, heavy lift, single stage to orbit craft.

But nope!

Nope, instead we get... what are at now, 13, 14 attempts by Elon Musk to even achieve actual orbit with his Starship? Still haven't managed that yet.

So now the ISS is slated to get deorbited, China will have the only major space station, and we will have a ... Kessler Syndrome generation program, in the expansion of StarLink into 'StarMind', those million orbital AI datacenters Musk has recently had CGI made for, and will never happen.

Nope, I'm not mad, definitely not mad, nope.

This happened in 1957. You might think the plane caught up with its own bullets, but what actually happened was the pilot fired a 4-second burst from the 20mm cannon during a test flight, then climbed at high speed and dove back down faster than the speed of sound (i.e. "faster than a apeeding bullet"), where he passed through the cloud of his own rounds which had decelerated due to air friction. So it wasn't a defect in the plane, it was really a random accident nobody had thought about because planes traditionally weren't fast enough to perform a maneuver that would make such a thing possible.

edit: story on wikipedia

I doesn't seem like catching up to me because catching up implies speed was increased to intercept, not distances were different followed by intercept.

If I fire a gun nearly perfectly straight up, run forward 10 feet and catch the bullet in my shoulder it wouldn't feel right to say that I fired, ran fast enough to catch up to my bullet and shot myself.

You fire a bullet and it accelerates downward at 9.8m/s2 until it gets to some terminal velocity. It moves forward at some velocity with a braking acceleration that's non-linear and gross. Result is a downward motion in a basically parabolic arc.
The plane, however, is accelerating downward faster than the bullet because of thrust, and also accelerating forward.
By the time drag has essentially stopped the bullet the plane is underneath it.

When phrased as "caught up" it makes it sound like the plane went as fast as the bullet, when the plane had a top speed of mach 1 and the bullet ~mach 3. They just took different paths.

You don't actually need to be ahead of them on the horizontal plane. The plane just needs to be able to cover the distance the bullet travels as it slows from drag before the bullet falls to the intercept point.

I was gonna say at least a portion of the plane had to be ahead of it unless it struck the very tip of the plane (which wouldn't likely take it down).

But it is traveling at supersonic speeds. So yeah - the bullet could just be falling in front of the plane at that point and the plane could run into the bullet - so it'd be traveling faster than the bullet at that point, but the bullet would be in front of it. Weird lol

I remember first learning about that engine design and being similarly mad about why it never saw any use.

Yeeep.

Its some pretty crazy shit, that we literally know how to do... and just... don't.

Because stock market line go up is more important I guess?

Gotta pay for more missiles to blow up brown people?

But yeah, aerospikes are awesome because they're like the ... jack of all trades of effective thrust at different ambient air pressures/densities.

They're not the most efficient or powerful at any particular altititude band... but they're shockingly decent at a whole bunch of them, across the spectrum, because of their fundamental design.

So they're literally perfect for an SSTO, reusable concept. Definitely do a full inspection and maintenance cycle after every mission, they're kinda complicated... but, if you take care of one... it should just basically keep working for quite a long time.

Which transformer is this? Need a model kit asap.

We went from the wright brothers to that in like 55 years

Your entire line of logic is broken with how this happened, and how bullets work. Also, bullets start getting slower the moment they leave the barrel. A bullets terminal velocity is MUCH, MUCH, slower than when it leaves the barrel.

The plane shot bullets as it was arching down, so the plane was traveling under the bullets previously fired trajectory, and those bullets dropped down to where the plane wound up at because the bullets slowed enough to get there at the same time.

The f-11s weren't crazy fast or anything. It was doing around 800mph when it happened.

There's literally no other scenario to shoot yourself with a bullet shot towards the horizon (not straight up). A bullet has to be going much faster than a plane when it exits the barrel. A bullet has to start slowing down from drag the moment it leaves the barrel, so there's no scenario that can exist where a plane can shoot itself in a way that isn't catching up to a bullet that was getting slower.

He was going around 600 mph, fired the gun, then he dove down more and hit the afterburners to pick up speed and start leveling back out and was around 8 or 900 mph when he met up with his then, much slower than they were going bullets.

So he got faster and went low, while the bullets kept getting lower and slowing down from drag.

"The D-21 was designed to carry a single high-resolution photographic camera over a preprogrammed path, then release the camera module into the air for retrieval, after which the drone would self-destruct."

I not sure how my logic is wrong when you then described exactly what I said.

We both understand how objects move. It's a semantics question, not kinematics.
"Caught up" implies moving fast enough to close the distance in a persuit like fashion, to me at least.

It's not catching up with someone if you take a shortcut and wait for them to arrive.

Isn't that just the su 47, but anime?

Or ... did ... the Russians... make anime space jet plane thing... real?

Nah, just slap a GAU 8 onto it, it'll be fine lol.

Fuckin... Mach 3.5 CAS gun run rofl

If you can line up the shot, from 20 miles away, and make the shot, in a roughly 0.5 second window... well the rounds will going roughly Mach 3 faster than from an A 10.

... presuming you immediately pull up, so as to not fly into the rounds.

It was literally the little spy satellite that couldn't (make it to orbit).

They'd ... they'd either retrieve the photo canister from the ground, or, ideally...

Catch it in the air, using basically the sky hook system, as seen in MGSV.

Its... the ludicrousness of this system is really only slightly exaggerated in its MGSV portrayal.

My vote for a single song that encapsulates the history of powered flight.

God that thing looks like it could be found in one of those toy sets you only ever see at the zoo. I love it!

I also really hope that joke isn't too niche...

But God damn you know some engineer was proud of that anti leak at attitudes feature. You know some guy with a slide role figured that crap out with pencil and paper over the course of days. Absolutely love it

The first one you posted is definitely peak action sci-fi. It's movie would star Arnold or someone similar. The second is some Last Starfighter, post Star Trek, pre Star Wars cheese flick

Grumman X-29 had forward swept wings in the 1980s.

Likely both the Anime and the su-47 got some inspiration from the X-29.

Yeah, I mean they were solving problems with the tools they had. I just love the idea of them tracking down the actual film

I mean, the SR 71 is literally the X Jet, from X-men.

Its...

Here:

The design has changed somewhat over the years, but... it just literally is the X Jet.

Its in XMen First Class, where it is of course also now VTOL or STOVL, in addition to being Mach 3+ capable... because... why the fuck not?

....Why do you think Naked Snake actually needed to go into a goddamned Russian jungle in the 60s?

The venture star is the aerospace manifestation of the granny shot free throw in basketball. Sure it's mathematically and mechanically optimal... but you're still gonna look dumb using it

Lockheed has built some WACKY shit, but I like Grumman better. Grumman made the Avenger the Tomcat and the Apollo Lunar Module. Take that, Stinkbug.

Aight, so you seem very knowledgeable about niche air craft, so I have a pointless question for you...

What's the aircraft that most makes you wonder how tf it even flies?

Guess we'll have to do it the old European boring way? Using old rocket tech

This wing config it for high speed IIRC and has been tried loads of times, the russian (korbut?) wasn't the first.

Well he did pursue them and catch up, sooo....

I would presume that that distinction would belong to the world war one planes that fired their guns through their own propeller?

Didn't the russians do this to? The GSh-6-30 was in theory catastrophically powerful being essentially a gargantuan flak cannon minnigun but had the unfortunate tendency to hit the firing aircraft with its own shrapnel... assuming the vibration from the gun didn't literally shake the plan apart first.

True, to varying extents... but the 47 is well known and also just shocking similar in design elements and proportions to the Macross ... not-a-gundam.

Grumman X-29:

Think it first flew in 84, definitely earlier than the su-47, but also, purely an experimental tech demonstrator, whereas the su-47 was at least ostensibly, potentially, going to be an actual combat aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-swept_wing

Apparently, quite a lot of people have been futzing about with concept, for a long time.

Ahahaha.

Ah.

Well, the actual honest answer is that I've twice seen a quite large, hovering, silent, large equilateral triangle shaped craft.

The greenish, lower left pic is pretty much exactly what I've seen, twice, over the course of 10 years, around Seattle.

The second time I saw it, I was going across the West Seattle Bridge, and saw it hovering, only a few hundred feet over a hangar or some large byilding in Boeing Field, on the west side of Marginal Way.

Ironically, on the other side of the road as the Flight Museum where the extant M21and D21 are on display.

I do not purport to have any fucking clue how this thing works, but I have definitely seen it twice.

So yeah that's my actual answer, I've twice seen something that is apparently called the TR 3B sometimes 'Astra', sometimes 'Black Manta'. I have no idea why it has that name, if thats even kind of accurate to anything... but yep... giant (by normal aircraft standards), black, silent, hovering, equilateral triangle, with a large glowing area in the center, and 3 different glowing areas just inside of the uh, tips.

The second time I saw it, it was close enough that I could see red / green running lights on it... so ... my assumption is that it is some kind of human, experimental aircraft.

Military.com says, unofficially, that it ... well here:

https://www.military.com/video/aircraft/military-aircraft/tr-3b-aurora-anti-gravity-spacecrafts/2860314511001

It doesn't exist officially. It uses highly pressured mercury accelerated by nuclear energy to produce a plasma that creates a field of anti-gravity around the ship. Conventional thrusters located at the tips of the craft allow it to perform all manner of rapid high speed maneuvers along all three axes. Interestingly, the plasma generated also reduces radar signature significantly. So it'll be almost invisible on radar & remain undetected. This literally means that it can go to any country it likes without being detected by air traffic control & air defence systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(UFO)#Military_aircraft

https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/tr-3b-black-manta-secret-us-aircraft-anti-gravity/

?????

So anyway this would be the thing that I have no idea how it flies.

... Would you believe my cousin actually used to work SkunkWorks, before moving over to BlueOrigin?

Ah... everybody just calls me crazy.

Seeing the blackbird in the Smithsonian with it's engines so close you can almost touch it is a hallowed experience...

There's an air and space museum near where I grew up that has a real SR-71, and one time when I was visiting, one of the old pilots happened to be there and he gave my girlfriend and I an up-close tour of it. He showed us where him and his buddies signed it and put handprints on the underside. Very fascinating experience.

Also the LLV, the classic US Mail truck.