Blackbird

[Kenneth C. King]

]>About the Blackbird leaking, the skin of the aircraft (it has wet tanks)
]>was made with super thin slits in them.  When the airframe heated up at
]>speed, the titanium expanded and forced these slits closed.  Without them,
]>the skin would buckle at high temperature.  You have to admit, it takes
]>balls to design a plane with holes in the fuel tank!
]
]Am I correct that the fuel was more of a jelly than a liquid?
]
]-Jim Steck

greetings:
  my understanding was that the blackbird's *real* fuel was a jel at normal
(for people) temperatures.  i believe they used another (more liquid) fuel
to get it rolling.  the thinner fuel combined with the cold (and contracted)
skin lead to the worst of the leaks.  once at a 'reasonable' altitude, a big
tanker would feed the bird the jel (preheated for flow?).  this reduced the
bird's takeoff weight and allowed the hot skins to be cooled by the fuel.
once the plane was up to speed, the skin would expand and seal all the fuel
in before too much could leak out.

later,
kc
--
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"he's dead, jim"he's not dead, he's electroencephalographically challenged" kc