Re: Anxiously awaiting Aurora discussion at conference


Message posted by psiuh88 on April 24, 2009 at 19:11:56 PST:

so, did the USAF ever actually consider re-skinning the SR-71 fleet in the late 1980's?
they must have known for a few years of impending retirement of the SR-71 , or at least the chance of it, so why would they have told some people they were going to apply a very large quantity of the same beta alloy of titanium as used throughout much of the SR-71 airframe? and on that chance, why order a large quanitity of the alloy when the last time it had been made in such quanitities was the 1960's (apparently enough time had elapsed since it had last been made that much had to be "re-learned").
Was re-skinning in entirety an SR-71 something that was ever undertaken? I can see some patches made here and there for damage or possibly some cracks.
if not, then all that metal went somewhere. The alloy used on teh SR-71 was not the generic 6-4 titanium alloy used on most other skins and some structural parts like on the F-15 (it had better high temperature strength and oxidation resistance than 6-4, plus it age hardened when heated to 800-1000F or so).


In Reply to: Re: Anxiously awaiting Aurora discussion at conference posted by Peter Merlin on April 23, 2009 at 15:27:03 PST:

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