Technology has always been an intriguing subject since it inception, keen and totally undulating about its advancement and at such leaving no stone unturned. Jets have in its own capacity been not just an intricate part of these technological advancements but a sophisticated and brain-wracking experiments in the hands of jet manufacturers who seem to stop at nothing to manufacture and ultimately launch a safer, faster and comfy means of air transportation to its passengers.
At such this article seeks to critically examine the world’s fastest passengers jet ever designed – “The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird” designed by Clarence Kelly, is a long range, high speed and altitude Mach 3+, 85,000 ft, 25,900 m strategic aircraft developed and manufactured by the American Aerospace Company Lockheed Corporation, officially introduced to operational service in january 1966 and still holds the official world record for the fastest jet aircraft today.
Unique Features of the Fastest Passenger Jet – The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird include:
- The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird being the fastest jet aircraft in the world, reaches and incredibly ridiculous speeds of Mach 3.3–that’s above 3,500 kph (2,100 mph) and approximately four times as fast as the average cruising speed of a commercial airliner.
- The secret of the Lockheed SR-71 Speed and agility is largely due to its unique engine inlets – consisting of a duct where air gets in to the engine, handling the sporadic changes in speed and pressure, air is slowed to subsonic speeds before allowed into the jets engines. A diamond pattern is usually created by the SR-71 exhaust, this is as a result of the extra thrust provided by its supersonic afterburner, creating successive shockwaves that show up as the diamond pattern. The SR-71 flies continuously in afterburner except when being refueled.
The Lockheed SR-71 have the ability to withstand heat, this is evident in its ability to fly triple times over the speed of light. The SR-71 generates 600° Fahrenheit on its external surface, this means that it could melt regular aluminum air frames. This is the ultimate reason why its external skin is made of Titanium Alloy shielding an internal aluminum air frame.
- The Lockheed SR-71 tires retract into the wings, the tires are made of latex mixed with aluminum and filled with nitrogen, with a pressure of 415psi to keep them from melting.
Since the first airspeed estimated on December 17th, 1903 and its very first flight, lasting about 12 hours and a few seconds and 37 meters, the Wright brothers figured it to have reached a speed of 50 km/h. Also, about half a century later, during the peak of the Cold War and the space race, there was a witness of rivalry between the East and West for the fastest passenger jet aircraft in the world.
Passenger jets, at the peak of the supersonic era, raced across the sky at over twice the speed of sound. While today most have cruising speeds just over 1,000 km/h. Worthy of Note is – Boeing’s R&D department have been putting in measures and strategies that may birth reasonable results by 2050, foreseeing planes shuttling New York – London in as short as two hours time duration.
Some Near Fastest Passenger Jet Options Ever developed
Tupolev TU-144
While there seems to be some discussion as to which of the previous supersonic commercial aircraft to grace the sky was actually the fastest, the generally accepted figures put the Soviet-built Tupolev TU-144.
The TU-144 though short-lived, first took flight on New Year’s Eve 1968, with a maximum speed of Mach 2.29 (2,430 km/h) averaged around Mach 1.6.
The aircraft was retired from passenger service in 1978, merely a year after performing its first passenger flight for Aeroflot. By then, it had completed only 55 passenger flights, but had also been involved in two fatal accidents.
One at the Paris Air Show in 1973, with an unknown cause till date. The next fatality happened during a test flight in Russia in 1978, due to a ruptured fuel line. The latter was the main reason for the plane being deemed as unsafe for passenger travel, and was my active as a training aircraft for pilots of the Buran space shuttle, and as a research aircraft for NASA on high-altitude atmosphere radiological conditions. The TU-144 conducted its final flight in June 1999.
Concorde
Its supersonic rival, the legendary British-French Concorde, had a much longer life-span as a commercial passenger plane. Entering service in January 1976, it had a top speed of Mach 2.04 (2,180 km/h) at cruise altitude. It exited in 2003, having had one fatal accident three years prior when Air France flight 4590 crashed just after taking off from Paris-Charles de Gaulle.
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