In my usual internet reading today I stumbled across an article wrote by the pilot of a SR-71 Blackbird. I happened to find it on Gizmodo between a bunch of stuff about the iPad. The guy talks about how the plane would actually drip fuel because the seams didn't quite fit together when it was just sitting on the ground or subsonic. Since the plane would heat up to 1,100 degrees at Mach 3, the whole plane would expand. Hence the need for expansion joints. Just think about that for a minute. Damn. And there is a part in the story where the guy says "I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily , but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar." Holy crap. I don't want to ruin the whole article for you, so just go check it out, it's worth it (unlike most of the stuff on here).
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