U-2 flight

[DARISC]

If this has already been posted, sorry.

Breathtaking spy plane footage. [VIDEO]

[sammyg2]

Lots O'folks don't realize that the U-2 is still in service, flying over aff-ganny-stan and other places. it's destined to be retired soon and be replaced with the RQ-4:

[Amail]

At eye level, say 5'8", your horizon is 2.9 miles away. You can see 26 sqaure miles of territory.

At 70,000' your horizon is 323 miles away. You can see 327,000 square miles of territory.

That's a lot to take in.

[tcar]

Who is the narrator? Looks familiar...

James May?

[syncroid]

That is James May of Top Gear.

[M.D. Holloway]

Please confirm: In 1978 the U2, from way the F up could take pics so refined they could tell what postage stamp was on an envelope. I say BS but can't confirm or deny...

[tcar]

Don't know about stamps, but they COULD see a license plate - not read it though.

[Danny_Ocean]

Interesting reading. I thought Powers was the only U-2 pilot shot down by the enemy. Looks like Cuba got one, too:

Lockheed U-2

[nota]

I have a old WW2 aircraft lens by Kodak
it is about 350mm on 35mm film
[donot have the camera just yardsale found the lens]

anyways in 78 we are talking film not el-tricks
maybe some postprocessing with computer aids but really limited
so limits are grain size film size and lens/mirror size
small grain plus big sheet of film but fast exposure time as the jet is moving fast
airframe limits the lens go too wide and its way too long to be real high power
then there is aiming
snap a shot of a city or a factory ok
but how do you aim at a stamp size target ??

tell a car from a tank sure or a ICBM site
but Philatelic Society level ids NO

[Danny_Ocean]

James Baker developed the optics for a large-format camera to be used in the U-2 while working for Perkin-Elmer. These new cameras had a resolution of 2.5 feet from an altitude of 60,000 feet. Balancing is so critical on the U-2 that the camera had to use a split film, with reels on one side feeding forward while those on the other side feed backward, thus maintaining a balanced weight distribution through the whole flight.

[dan79brooklyn]

Super Cool, Thanks for Sharing!

[Garp]

Two years ago, December 08, this fellow flew through our airspace.
Call sign used NASA 928, 49.000 ft, never heard of the program. Plane is a WB57, an original English Electra Canberra with much longer wings. I remember talking to the NASA 1 , TR1 (U2) at 66.000 ft many moons ago.
NASA - NASA Imaging Team Develops 'Eye in the Sky' for Shuttle Chase Planes

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

Please confirm: In 1978 the U2, from way the F up could take pics so refined they could tell what postage stamp was on an envelope. I say BS but can't confirm or deny...

I would love to be proved wrong but I have to say that is pure urban myth. I work in the aerial photography profession. The cameras and lenses of the modern era current state of the art stuff are amazing. We have hundreds of thousands of negative going back over 50 years. The old stuff is just junk by today’s standards.

We recently flew an area of downtown OKC just to make a big sample print for our customer area. It was flown very low using top professional mapping equipment. This is small piece of the image and you can see people, but not even who they are.

Our systems are designed for maximum accuracy for mapping and we hear that spy cameras don’t care about accuracy as much as sharpness. Our lens is a 6 inch focal length and is a very wide angle for a 9x9 inch image. A telephoto lens would get a ton more detail but from 60,000 feet you are shooting through 11 miles of air. It is like looking through a soda straw and trying to find the area of interest. I feel sure they can find an ICBM, or a truck and they might see the shadow of a human, but to see down to a ¼ of an inch postage stamp and read it is just beyond silly.

[MFAFF]

There are a couple of well know images taken from an SR-71 travelling at 80,000ft @ M3 over IIRC a football stadium in Kansas...you can clearly see the lines used in the car park to mark the individual spaces... those lines are 3 inches wide...

I think the camera in the U-2 was the same...

The A-12 (the CIA Blackbird, singel seat which started the series) had a different camera as its primary sensor which was 'apparently' even more sensitive....so perhaps that is why the reading number plates rumour/myth came about..

Even so 3 inches from 80,000ft and M3....pretty impressive.

[GH85Carrera]

That image above is a 1.75 inch pixel image. You can see the stripes in a parking lot with a 12 inch pixel image.

[flatbutt]

a pilot with eyeglasses?

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by Garp

Two years ago, December 08, this fellow flew through our airspace.
Call sign used NASA 928, 49.000 ft, never heard of the program. Plane is a WB57, an original English Electra Canberra with much longer wings. I remember talking to the NASA 1 , TR1 (U2) at 66.000 ft many moons ago.

This plane and several others are based in Houston, flying out of the NASA field there. Airport is named Ellington Field.

There are a lot more things like this that no one talks about, and camera's and imaging devices that are a lot better than what you guys are curious about. Thats about all I will say on the subject!

[Danny_Ocean]

U-2 pics (but you didn't hear this from me...):

[DARISC]

I never posted this.

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by DARISC

I never posted this.

You're a riot!

BTW did you get my PM?