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MFAFF MFAFF is online now
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: London
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Paul,

Interesting stuff...

The speed and height information may however be a bit optimistic..

For know flight to that regime (speed and height) something more like this is needed...


And if we look closely at the nose there are a couple of tell-tales...
1) Blunt nose cone. The frictional heat generated is such that a pointed nose like the SR, with a pitot tube, would melt quite quickly at those speeds (as the found out with the X-15)...

2) The aircraft would need a totally separate flight control system for flight to those sort of heights... If you look closely at the nose you can see the paired ports just behind the nose cone. As on the Shuttle and the space capsules this flight control uses direct thrust to alter the fligth path.. the air that these heights is too thin to act properly on the conventional flight control surfaces. (Note the Harrier uses a thrust control system when in hovering flight... so its not limited to high speed and high alts...but its bleed air system.


If you look at the NF104s that were used to train pilots in high spped high alt flights they were also adapted to have a thrust control system....
Old 07-04-2007, 12:19 AM
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