Yea so to add more to that the RSO or Reconnaissance Systems Officer had his own cockpit locked off from the pilot, there only communication was through radio as there cabins were completely separate, He was in charge of the mission, had all the computers, ran the camera, and was responsible for a bit of the navigation. One thing to note is the RSO had absolutely no flight controls, if the pilot was incapacitated, His only hope would be to eject, and pray. To My knowledge this never happened.
The pilot had his hands full managing an aircraft that was prone the engine stalls and violent handling at 2K MPH. If the pilot suffered a medical emergency, the RSO could basically point the aircraft towards home using the astroinertial navigation system if the auto pilot was engaged, but he had no flight controls, throttles, etc. The hope would be to eject when over friendly territory. If the RSO had a medical emergency, the pilot had a compass and that’s it. He didn’t know where they were globally and again, could only point the nose towards home based on compass headings. This bird required both crew to get it where it was going. It should also be mentioned that the cameras were able to take images 80 miles wide, and map over 100K square miles of earth surface per hour.
@@shannonchurchill4556 this is awesome thanks for sharing this info! Definitely appreciate helping all of us to understand what a crazy airplane this was.
That's really interesting! It mixed my love for aviation and photography in a supersonic bundle. I would love to see it, but being UK based creates a bit of a distance.
Great video! I really liked the informative nature of this video and that IMAX video you last did, they both gave a very unique look into the subject at hand and went into very satisfying detail!
What was cool about aerial reconnaissance cameras was that the lens would rotate front to back to track the ground object, so that the speed of the aircraft was cancelled out and didn’t blur the photograph. The moving of the lens would make the ground appear to be stationary
3:44 The biggest cost would have been that equipment wasnt “off the shelf” but specially designed just for the SR-71 and with a very limited production run. It’s like going to Canon and asking them to make you a one-off custom made camera to your own design. And Canon having to do all the tooling, circuit boards, lenses, parts and casing.
I wonder if the coating is Titanium Nitride since their would be some very good reasons to us Titanium Nitride (TiN) coating vs. Gold. 1. Melting point of Titanium Nitride is 5,306 Deg F. And gold melts at 1,948. 2. Titanium Nitride is a ceramic coating that has very Low Friction value is wear resistant, extremely Hard, inert, good chemical Resistance, and is used in Hip implants, Drill Bits, Gum Barrels, etc. 3. Gold is very soft but does have some of above properties. 4. It’s color is Gold in nature, can be polished, and if spinning would have very low Friction Coefficient. 5. Its application is normally done by PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) 6. Titanium Nitride is Non Toxic and (FDA) approved.
So cool to see. Been looking for info on the SR-71 cameras for a while. But all that touching! Fifty years from now I fear all those fingerprints are going to have corroded the various materials.
Danny, almost all tech is first used by military, so was the internet as the "new" thing developed for a niche thing like art for example, but in the meantime its also used by the military
You should keep your hands off of the gold head because it tarnishes the gold. The gold helps dissipate the heat, temperature control is very important to the quality of the end product.
Glad to see the underlying hardware. I am a embedded systems engineer with a background in hardware. This gave me a precise view of where technology was at the time. Those little black box modules were the equivalent of todays op-amp. Built with discrete components and most likely costing several thousand dollars each. Military grade hardware is very expensive due to high reliability and extreme performance criteria. A very exciting field to work in. Cutting edge.
1) SR-71s were not "being shot at" on any regular basis- the whole point was that they flew so high and fast they avoided that (the plane does not carry weapons). 2) the pilot flew the plane and the cameras were operated by the reconnaissance systems officer, seated in tandem behind the pilot. Its not like one dude was swooping around dodging bullets while trying to operate multiple systems.
They would have definitely been targeted by air to ground missles, and yeah of course they had a nav or cso or wso doing the camera stuff. thanks for watching.
Hey Danny I was literally at March Air Force base yesterday! I was taking pictures of all outside airplanes with 3 different film cameras. I'm surprised that I did not see you there. A museum volunteer saw me with all my cameras and allowed me rare access to go up to the observation towers for pictures.
Sun and D-970 oh nice! Thats an awesome vantage point to see the view from! I was there over a month ago. Im pretty slow to edit sometimes. Thatd been awesome to meet. Thanks
Danny Pops oh I see. Yeah I was having a great time taking pictures while sweating all over from the heat. I used an AE-1 Program , Minolta Maxxum 400si, and an Argus 75 with color film and black and white 100 slide film.
Those red LED strips around the aero spikes need to go ASAP. This isn't a fairground attraction. Maybe change it to white if its just for lighting compartments and straighten them out (no sagging).
1:57 what do you mean by the speed being calibrated by the speed of the plane? At first I thought you meant the film was in sync with the speed of the plane to create a panorama but guess that's not the case. Also what song starts at 1:08?
Due to the speed of the airplane, the film would be exposed at different rates to control motion blur. This was done through the speed of the sliding black/ aperature/shutter device, and the angle of the lens inside the housing. Song is called Golden from the youtube library: ru-vid.commusic
The astro inertial navigation system in the SR and the A12 was what ran the show on all non engine levels. They called it the R2D2 because it was a refrigerator sized computer that was lowered into a bay behind the RSO, about the size of R2D2, and had a glass bubble on top that pointed to the sky. It would take a 3 star fix out of the hanger, then run the internal gyro and all the computers and cameras, nav...
I also recommend the Udvar-Hazy museum in Dulles VA, about an hour outside of D.C. they also have a blackbird and they let you get really close to it, with tons of display cases all around it. It is a truly astonishingly beautiful plane.
daxter i think you may be able to charge with a battery charger from an ag 156. Most vhs batteries were the same from panasonic. Also this has got to be the most random post on this video.
Yes, some of it is declassified and in books by SR71 pilots. Look up Col. Richard Graham in particular. They're not "blown up" though, the cool thing is that the resolution was so good that you could blow up the negative to to the point to where you could distinguish down to about 6 inches.
@@DannyPops yeah I’m sure it was. My dad never lets on that it was that hard but he’s like a lot of guys his age and doesn’t make a fuss about anything ever. He was also at Beale when 61-17977 (SR-71A) burned up its brakes and slid off the runway on landing. (For whatever reason he remembers he was getting a hair cut and saw it through the window.) He watched as they brought in excavators and dozers and just buried the bird. It was more expensive to replace all of that composite paneling than it was worth to the Air Force and they had to get it out of sight more quickly than could. The forward portion of the plane including cockpit was dug up and is on display at the museum in Seattle and think it’s the only one you can just climb into and see what it was like. I really want to take a trip and see it. Dad didn’t care when I asked him to go with me saying “I’ve already sat in one that was complete and could fly. Why would I go all the way there just to sit in a part of a wrecked one?” Lol lucky old fart.
