Early Bird

51 years ago, on December 22nd, 1964 the Blackbird took it's first official flight. To celebrate that day a list of stats was released. In another "only interesting to me" file, here they are:

• 35 miles per minute or 3,100 feet per second is how fast the SR-71 could fly
• 170,000 pounds was how much a fully fueled and outfitted Blackbird weighed
• 59,000 pounds was what one weighed empty
• 107 feet, 5 inches is the length of a Blackbird
• 85,000 feet is the official Blackbird ceiling, although it supposedly could fly higher
• 34,000 pounds of thrust were what each of the SR-71’s J-58 engines put out in afterburner
• 17,300 total sorties were flown by the Blackbird family of aircraft
• 3,551 of these sorties were operational missions
• 11,675 hours were spent over mach three
• 53,490 total flight hours were amassed on the fleet
• Just 8 crew members had more than 1,000 hours in the jet
• Only 86 SR-71 pilots and 86 RSOs flew operational missions
• 385 total persons have reached mach three in a Blackbird, including 105 VIPs
• 478 total people have flown in Blackbirds
• 32 SR-71s were built
• 50 total Blackbird family aircraft were built (A-12, YF-12, SR-71, M-21)
• 1 hour and 4 minutes was how fast the SR-71 could go from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.
• $33,000,000 was the cost to build a single SR-71 Blackbird
• 900 degrees Fahrenheit was how hot the SR-71’s skin got during high-speed runs
• 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit was the temperature of the J-58 engine’s exhaust at maximum output
• Over 1,000 missiles were launched at the SR-71 without any losses
• 5 pounds is how much weight a SR-71 crew member could lose in their pressure suit during a four hour mission
• 85 percent of the Blackbird’s skin is titanium, the other 15 percent is carbon composites
• 2.5G was the SR-71’s structural stress limit
• About 16 “starts” per engine worth of Triethylborane (TEB) were carried on an SR-71 mission as the Blackbird’s engines could not be restarted in the air without the TEB accelerant.
• 140 degrees Fahrenheit was the flash-point of the SR-71’s JP-7 fuel. Normal jet fuel has a flash-point of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 56 KC-135s were converted to KC-135Q/Ts that could refuel Blackbirds
• 20 of the 50 Blackbird aircraft family were written off in crashes and mishaps
• 6 inches is how much longer the SR-71 would grow at high speed due to heat expansion
• Zero was the number of computers used to design the Blackbird