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Please remember that this technological miracle was developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s!!

The SR-71 is the most incredible and beautiful aircraft ever conceived.

They have actually tried to change how the X-Jet looks several times but every time they go back the design based off the SR-71.  It’s just such a cool looking plane

I read a book about the SR-71 last year written by one of the later pilots. Among the more interesting things was the fact that on some missions the crew would often see multiple sunsets and sunrises in a single flight. While flying towards the sun the aircraft was outrunning the Earth’s rotation which made the sun rise in relation to the aircraft. To refuel the plane would decelerate to subsonic speed and descend in altitude to rendezvous with the tanker aircraft and the sun would set. After refuelling they would accelerate back to speed, climb to altitude and the sun would begin to rise again….in the West!

This plane is in the museum I work at. it's hung from cables in the gallery, and is veeeeery slowly sinking towards the exhibit hall

Over half a century old and STILL looks more futuristic that just about anything else in the sky!

Not 20 years earlier, people were flying Mustangs and Spitfires in WW2. Talk about an insane development in technology!

My father in law worked on the camera equipment for these babies. They are amazing all over

Kelley Johnson's creation of the SR-71 is a triumph of engineering rarely equaled.  Maybe Brunelleschi's dome in Florence.

Wow, these skunk work folk really were a different breed and this was all done in an era without a desktop computer. There were so many obstacles to getting the machine made but they successfully overcame every single one.

Funfact:
The name „Skunk Works“ goes back to the first location of the division. It was inside an old circus tent which was located near a plastics factory. Said factory often emitted some pretty foul smells, which gave rise to people answering the phone like „Skunk Works, Johnson here“. The top brass at Lockheed didn’t like it, but the name stuck.

Source: Ben Rich, „Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed“.

The 1960s a era of massive technological advancements the SR71 was just an insane aircraft and nothing since then has come close.

As a young man I built a plastic model of the SR-71; Thought it was super cool looking but I had NO IDEA what sort of airplane it was but it had to be crazy fast, that much I was sure of .

“Do you even READ my Christmas list!?” - Alucard, Hellsing Ultimate Abridged

My dad used to take our family to air shows all over the UK when I was a kiddie, so we saw the Blackbird fly a number of times. Aside from the Vulcan, it was always the highlight for us. I first visited New York in 2002 and saw the Blackbird on the USS Intrepid, it was wonderful to see the plane again…only wish it could have been flying! ❤

There was an Air Force Base in San Bernardino California where that used to hold an air show every few years. Back in the early 90s I saw the SR-71 there and you could get within twenty feet of it so I checked it out for about an hour. My girlfriend was getting tired of waiting or I would have looked much longer. We found some food and shade and while we were eating they fired up that beast and we watched it take off and make a few quick passes before roaring away over the mountains. Definitely worth the price of admission alone.

One job I had in the US Army was with satellite communications.  When they were launching a brand new series of models, they had people over at my duty station in California to test them out.  One of the guys, I forget his name, was an older fellow and he worked on the SR-71.  As he told it, they were doing things that were way ahead of what was being done at the time.  He thought of himself as smart, but there was stuff being developed that he couldn't comprehend at the time.  It really was a modern wonder of the civilized world.

Simon is so close to achieving his goal of narrating 71 videos about the SR-71

Lest we forget,  the single zeat A-12's, that flew extended missions in Vietnam.  Just one guy, doing BOTH tasks.