h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The XB-70 Valkyrie plane, produced/tested in the 1960s, was designed to take advantage of compression lift, with reconfigurable wingtips to provide stability at supersonic speeds as the plane rode its own shock wave. Unfortunately, the Valkyrie was big, expensive, hard to maintain, and everything else that makes a military/aerospace project a fair target for U.S. Congress budget cuts. Only two were ever produced, and one crashed during flight testing. The other is currently in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

And the ring-plane flies beautifully.

See, this is one of the things I LOVE about this site. You write something that shows off the tiny little bit of knowledge you've managed to accumulate, and people who know really COOL stuff come and tell it to you. This is GREAT! Thanks, seriously. I'd never heard of this thing until you told me, but I'm off to look for some pictures.

Cheers!


H.

http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html

A lovely site with some great pictures of the XB-70 (which doesn't look right, somehow - like a special effect or something out of "Thunderbirds" or something...) and a brief mention of compression lift.

Cool! Thanks again.

H.