Hazardous Atmosphere

Japanese night raiders are greeted with a lacework of anti-aircraft fire by the Marine defenders of Yontan airfield, on Okinawa. In the foreground are Marine Corsair fighter planes of the “Hell’s Belles’ squadron. 1945. T.Sgt. Chorlest.

The Cossack

The An-225 Mriya is a strategic airlift transport aircraft which was built by the Antonov Design Bureau, and is by some measures the largest airplane ever built. The design was an enlargement of the successful An-124 Ruslan. Mriya (Мрія) means "Dream" (Inspiration) in Ukrainian.
The An-225 was designed for the Soviet space program as a replacement for the Myasishchev VM-T. Able to airlift the Energia rocket's boosters and the Buran space shuttle, its mission and objectives are almost identical to that of the Airbus Beluga and the United States' Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

sky raptor

An F-22 Raptor, the world's first stealth air-to-air fighter, demonstrates combat maneuvers while participating in the 2007 Naval Air Station Oceana Air Show. The three-day air show featured demonstrations from the Blue Angels, British Red Devils and Blac

mother's belly

1st Lt. Jason Edwards checks the bomb load of a B-1B Lancer Dec. 29 as he and the rest of the aircrew preflight check the bomber prior to a mission. Lieutenant Edwards is with the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron at an air base in Southwest Asia.

U. S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Douglas Olsen

photo session: combat airwaves

B-2 Spirit refuels from a KC-135 Stratotanker

F/A-18 Super Hornet


The 64th Aggressor Squadron's F-15 Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcon

B-52

B-1B Lancer

a new member

Boeing Phantom Works has partnered with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory to study the structural, aerodynamic and operational advantages of the Blended Wing Body concept, a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design. The Air Force has designated the prototype the X-48B based on its interest in the design's potential as a multi-role, long-range, high-capacity military transport aircraft.
The X-48B Blended Wing Body technology demonstration aircraft was built by Cranfield Aerospace in the United Kingdom to Boeing's specifications. The subscale prototypes have a wingspan of 20.4 feet, with prominent vertical fins and rudders at the wingtips and elevons along the trailing edges of the wings. Three small model aircraft turbojet engines, providing a maximum combined thrust of about 160 lbs, power the 523-lb. gross weight aircraft. The X-48B has an estimated top airspeed of 118 knots (138 mph), a maximum altitude of about 10,000 feet and a flight duration of about 40 minutes.

fly me to the moon

This photo shows a U. S. Airways airliner, with attending twin contrails, appearing to pass in front of the first quarter Moon. In my experience this type of occultation occurs more often than people might think. In Albany, Missouri, from where this picture was snapped, commercial jets tend to follow "preferred" routes across the sky, and when the Moon happens to be in the vicinity of such a fly-over route, then a composition like the one above is possible. As an observer and photographer, you just have to be mindful, patient and prepared.

Photo details: taken with a 6" f/12 Maksutov Cassegrain telescope using a Nikon 995 digital camera. Photo captured on June 2, 2006.

copyright: Dan Bush, Missouri Skies

portuguese f-16a

An F-16A from the Portuguese Air Force prepares to refuel from a KC-10 while deployed to a forward location in the European theatre on March 19th, 1999. This mission is in direct support of Joint Task Force 'Noble Anvil'.

avrocar

The VZ-9- AV Avrocar was a Canadian VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Aircraft as part of a secret US military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War. Two prototypes were built as "proof-of-concept" test vehicles for more advanced USAF fighter and US Army tactical combat aircraft. The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single "turborotor." Thrust from the rotor was diverted out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft to provide anticipated VTOL-like performance. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer. In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project ended ignominiously with the program cancellation in 1961.

Type: experimental "proof-of-concept" vehicle
Manufacturer: Avro Aircraft Ltd.
Designed by: John Frost
Maiden flight: 12 November 1959
Introduced: 1958
Retired: 1961
Status: experimental
Primary users: United States Air Force (intended)United States Army (intended)
Produced: 1958-1959
Number built: 2
Unit cost: Project cost: $10 million (USD)

sr-71 blackbird

The SR-71 remained the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft throughout its career. From an altitude of 80,000 ft (24 km) it could survey 100,000 square miles per hour (72 square kilometers per second) of the Earth's surface. On 28 July 1976, an SR-71 broke the world record for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.1669 mph (3,529.56 km/h), and a US "absolute altitude record" of 85,068.997 feet (25,929 m). Several planes exceeded this altitude in zoom climbs but not in sustained flight. When the SR-71 was retired in 1990, one was flown from its birthplace at United States Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California to go on exhibit at what is now the Smithsonian Institution's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (an annex of the National Air & Space Museum) in Chantilly, Virginia. The Blackbird, piloted by Colonel Ed Yielding and Lt. Col. J.T. Vida, set a coast-to-coast speed record at an average 2,124 mph (3,418 km/h). The entire trip was reported as 68 minutes and 17 seconds. Three additional records were set within segments of the flight, including a new absolute top speed of 2,242 mph measured between the radar gates set up in St. Louis and Cincinnati. These were accepted by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), the recognized body for aviation records in the United States. An enthusiast site devoted to the Blackbird lists a record time of 64 minutes. The SR-71 also holds the record for flying from New York to London: 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds, set on 1 September 1974. This is only Mach 2.68, well below the declassified figure of 3.0+. (For comparison, commercial Concorde flights took around 3 hours 20 minutes, and the Boeing 747 averages 6 hours.)

General characteristics
Crew: 2
Payload: 3,500 lb (1,600 kg) of sensors
Length: 107 ft 5 in (32.74 m)
Wingspan: 55 ft 7 in (16.94 m)
Height: 18 ft 6 in (5.64 m)
Wing area: 1,800 ft2 (170 m2)
Empty weight: 67,500 lb (30 600 kg)
Loaded weight: 170,000 lb (77 000 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 172,000 lb (78 000 kg)
Powerplant: 2× Pratt & Whitney J58-1 continuous-bleed afterburning turbojets, 32,500 lbf (145 kN) each
Wheel track: 16 ft 8 in (5.08 m)
Wheel base: 37 ft 10 in (11.53 m)
Aspect ratio: 1.7
Performance
Maximum speed: Mach 3.3+ (2,200+ mph, 3530+ km/h) at 80,000 ft (24,000m)
Range:
Combat: 2,900 nm (5400 km)
Ferry: 3,200 nm (5,925 km)
Service ceiling: 85,000 ft (25,900m, 16 miles)
Rate of climb: 11,810 ft/min (60 m/s)
Wing loading: 94 lb/ft2 (460 kg/m2)
Thrust/weight: 0.382

more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird

Dr. von Braun Standing by Five F-1 Engines

A pioneer of America's space program, Dr. von Braun stands by the five F-1 engines of the Saturn V launch vehicle. This Saturn V vehicle is an actual test vehicle which has been displayed at the U.S. Space Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Designed and developed by Rocketdyne under the direction of the Marshall Space Flight Center, a cluster of five F-1 engines was mounted on the Saturn V S-IC (first) stage. The engines measured 19-feet tall by 12.5-feet at the nozzle exit and burned 15 tons of liquid oxygen and kerosene each second to produce 7,500,000 pounds of thrust. The S-IC stage is the first stage, or booster, of a 364-foot long rocket that ultimately took astronauts to the Moon.

Source: http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=5d5m4ql7dku94?id=MSFC-0201422&orgid=11

Prandtl-Glauert singularity

The Prandtl-Glauert singularity (sometimes referred to as a "vapor cone"), is the point at which a sudden drop in air pressure occurs, and is generally accepted as the cause of the visible condensation cloud that often surrounds an aircraft travelling at transonic speeds, though there remains some debate. It is an example of a mathematical singularity in aerodynamics.
One view of this phenomenon is that it exhibits the effect of compressibility and the so-called "N-wave". The N-wave is the time variant pressure profile seen by a static observer as a sonic compression wave passes. The overall three-dimensional shock wave is in the form of a cone with its apex at the supersonic aircraft. This wave follows the aircraft. The pressure profile of the wave is composed of a leading compression component (the initial upward stroke of the "N"), followed by a pressure descent forming a rarefaction of the air (the downward diagonal of the "N"), followed by a return to the normal ambient pressure (the final upward stroke of the "N"). The rarefaction may be thought of as the "rebounding" of the compression due to inertial effects. These condensation clouds, also known as "shock-collars" or "shock eggs," are frequently seen during space-shuttle launches around 25 to 33 seconds after launch when the vehicle passes through the area of maximum dynamic air-pressure, or max Q. These effects are also visible in archival footage of some nuclear tests. The condensation marks the approximate location of the shock wave.

Prandtl-Glauert singularity effects can be readily observed on a humid day by successfully cracking a whip. A visible cloud is produced at the point where the tip of the whip goes transonic.

proteus

Picture: Proteus in flight in 2002 in the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (ARM-UAV)* Program.

The Scaled Composites Model 281 Proteus is a tandem-wing high-endurance aircraft designed by Burt Rutan to investigate the use of aircraft as high altitude telecommunications relays. The Proteus is actually a multi-mission vehicle, able to carry various payloads on a ventral pylon. An extremely high-efficiency design, the Proteus can orbit a point at over 65,000 feet (19,800 m) for more than 18 hours. It is currently owned by Northrop Grumman.

Proteus has an all-composite airframe with graphite-epoxy sandwich construction. Its wingspan of 77 feet 7 inches is expandable to 92 feet with removable wingtips installed. Proteus is an "optionally piloted" aircraft ordinarily flown by two pilots in a pressurized cabin. However, it also has the capability to perform its missions semi-autonomously or flown remotely from the ground. Under NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) project, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center assisted Scaled Composites in developing a sophisticated station-keeping autopilot system and a satellite communications (SATCOM)-based uplink-downlink data system for Proteus' performance and payload data. The Proteus wing was adapted for use on the Model 318 White Knight carrier aircraft, which is the launch system for Rutan's Tier One spacecraft and the DARPA X-37.

General characteristics

Crew: Two (pilot & co-pilot)
Length: 56 ft 4 in (17.17 m)
Wingspan: 77 ft 7 in (23.65 m)
Height: 17 ft 7 in (5.36 m)
Wing area: 487.7 ft² (including canards) (45.31 m²)
Empty weight: 5,900 lb (2,700 kg)
Loaded weight: 12,500 lb (5,700 kg)
Powerplant: 2× Williams International FJ44-2 , 2,300 lbf (10.2 kN) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 274 knots (315 mph, 507 km/h)
Range: 415 nm (480 miles, 770 km)
Service ceiling: 60,000 ft (18,300 m)
Rate of climb: 6,000 ft/min (30 m/s)
Wing loading: 26 lb/ft² (128 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 1.8 N/kg

*Proteus has been used in a number of deployments as a part of a project sponsored by the DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program and the Sandia National Laboratories to study cirrus clouds in the upper atmosphere. During these flights, the aircraft was equipped with over 20 sensors mounted on five different parts of the aircraft. In November 2002, Proteus participated in another phase of the project, flying from Ponca City. In October, 2004, Proteus operated out of Fairbanks, Alaska, and in February, 2006, the aircraft was deployed to Darwin, Australia.

YB49

The Northrop YB-49 was a prototype jet-powered flying wing medium bomber aircraft developed by Northrop for the United States Air Force shortly after World War II. It was a development of the piston-engined YB-35, and the two YB-49s actually built were both converted YB-35 test aircraft. The aircraft was never to enter production, however, being passed over in favor of the more conventional Convair B-36 in service.

General characteristics

Crew: 7
Length: 53 ft 1 in (16.20 m)
Wingspan: 172 ft 0 in (52.40 m)
Height: 20 ft 3 in (6.2 m)
Wing area: 4,000 ft² (371.6 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 65-019 root, NACA 65-018 tip
Empty weight: 88,442 lb (40,116 kg)
Loaded weight: 133,559 lb (60,581 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 193,938 lb (87,969 kg)
Powerplant: 8× Allison/General Electric J35-A-19 turbojets, 3,800 lbf (17 kN) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 493 mph (793 km/h)
Range:
Combat: 1,615 mi (2,599 km)
Ferry: 3,578 mi (5,758 km)
Service ceiling: 45,700 ft (13,900 m)
Rate of climb: 3,758 ft/min (19.1 m/s)
Wing loading: 33 lb/ft² (163 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.23

Armament

Guns: 4 x .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns
Bombs: 32,000 lb (14,500 kg)