Originally Posted by
caloso
I grew up near Beale AFB and a lot of my friend's dads flew or maintained the Blackbird. No matter how many times you saw it, you couldn't help stop and watch the SR-71. Few things in this world are actually awesome, but the SR-71 in flight is. No carbon fiber in that bird.
What's interesting is that, because of the compressibility of air, a shape that's a nozzle at subsonic speeds is actually a diffuser at supersonic speeds, and vice versa. Because of this property, the SR-71 couldn't actually go supersonic without diving, it didn't produce enough power. But once it was supersonic it could accelerate to Mach 3+.l