Message posted by loopbacktest4echo on February 25, 2009 at 6:27:58 PST:
I was told by an Airman who worked on the SR-71 that the tools that touched the titanium parts had to be made of titanium also or they would cause a serious corrosion problem. This would make the tools much more expensive. Sounded reasonable. Toilets and coffee pots that have to work at altitude can be a real problem. The military has moved from from mil spec to off the shelf in many area's in order to cut costs. Back in the late 80's I was working on a satellite program and I saw the annual budget allocated for satellites and I just couldn't believe how much money was allocated. I was told at that time that most of the black budget was buried in there. For some perspective, I heard a lot of things that I never saw first hand. I remember being told by an AF tech that when the U2 took off and landed it had a El Camino at either wing tip to support the wings. At the time I thought he was putting me on. Years later I saw a film of this and I was astonished. Same thing happened back in the late 80's when I was told that pilots at Red Flag were using Fuzzbuster RADAR detectors to get a jump on their advisories by detecting when they turned on their RADARs.
In Reply to: Re: Money, Money, Money... posted by reeb88 on February 24, 2009 at 20:09:17 PST:
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