Paisehh yar B-52 turbo fans...duh
Anyway here's something REALLY interesting too:
Taken from http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/Story?id=3493887&page=1
So High, So Fast
At virtually any moment day or night you can look up and know
that somewhere over Earth there's a U-2 pilot at the edge of outer
space, watching and listening.
The U-2 is the most famous spy plane in history. Developed in
secret for the CIA more than 50 years ago, the U-2 first detected
the movement of Soviet nuclear weapons into Cuba, sparking the
Cuban Missile Crisis. But the U-2 is not just a piece of Cold War
history; it has been quietly brought into the space age and is now
flying more than ever.
The military doesn't like to talk about the U-2 plane much. Its
missions are secret, much of its technology classified.
More than a year and half ago, I asked the Air Force for an
opportunity to see the U-2 in action and, if possible, to actually
fly in one. This was not an easy request. Few civilians have ever
flown in a U-2. And almost all of them have only one seat; only
five in the world have two.
But this week, after some intense training, the Air Force agreed to
allow me to become one of the few civilians in history to fly to
the edge of Earth's atmosphere in a U-2.
The U-2 flies so high, so fast, the pilot wears a spacesuit, the
same one worn by astronauts on the space shuttle.
Before flying, I went through two days of training and preparation
at Beale Air Force Base in northern California, home base for the
U-2 since the 1960s.
Out on the runway at Beale, you can see why the U-2 is considered
the most difficult plane in the world to fly. Each pilot has a
co-pilot, who chases the plane on the runway in a sports car. Most
of the cars are either Pontiac GTOs or Chevrolet Cameros the Air
Force buys American.
The chase cars talk the pilot down as he lands on bicycle-style
landing gear. In that spacesuit, the pilot in the plane simply
cannot get a good view of the runway.
Upon takeoff, the wings on this plane, which extend 103 feet from
tip to tip, literally flap. To stabilize the wings on the runway,
two pogo sticks on wheels prop up the ends of the wings. As the
plane flies away, the pogo sticks drop off.
The plane climbs at an amazing rate of nearly 10,000 feet a minute.
Within about four minutes, I was at 40,000 feet, higher than any
commercial airplane. We kept going up to more than 70,000 feet,
about 14 miles above Earth's surface.
You get an incredible sensation up there. As you look out the
windows, it feels like you're floating, it feels like you're not
moving, but you're actually going 500 mph.
The U-2 was built to go higher than any other aircraft. In fact
today, more than 50 years since it went into production, the U-2
flies higher than any aircraft in the world with the exception of
the space shuttle.
Since this spring there has been what you might call a U-2 surge.
It is flying more missions and longer missions than ever before
nearly 70 missions a month over Iraq and Afghanistan, an
operational tempo that is unequaled in history. The pilots fly for
11 hours at a time, sometimes more than 11 hours up there
alone.
By flying so high, the U-2 has the capability of doing
reconnaissance over a country without actually violating its
airspace.
It can look off to the side, peering 300 miles or more inside a
country without actually flying over it. It can "see" in the dark
and through clouds.
It can also "hear," intercepting conversations 14 miles
below.
The U-2, an incredible piece of history and also a current piece of
high technology, is at the center of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Their copyright. Dont anyhow plagarise.
