Skunk Works Mailing List
RE: [Fwd: Sad Days]
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 23:18:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mary Shafer
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Sad Days]
On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 gregweigold@pmsc.com wrote:
> Mary might have a comment on this..... please say it ain't so, Mary!!
Mary said it was so weeks ago, when Fast Eddie flew his last flight.
The last flight has slipped to 27 Sept and we'll probably keep the
planes for more than two years, just not in flyable storage, but it's
so.
You want the Blackbirds to keep flying, write to your congress-critters
to increase the NASA aeronautics budget, particularly for Mach 3+
flight. Not the space budget, the aeronautics budget, and be sure to
mention the Blackbirds and Dryden. Get your friends to write. Don't
send e-mail; send real typed letters by snailmail. They've cut our
budget so deeply that we have had to lay up all but three research
programs using piloted aircraft and those three aren't very expensive.
We can't even take advantage of a golden opportunity to acquire and
operate the only high-performance variable-stability in-flight simulator
in the US (the USAF is abandoning it because they don't think there's
anything left to learn about aircraft dynamics and handling qualities,
which is why they've also disbanded the flight dynamics organization at
Wright-Pat, the folks who write the mil specs and sponsor the research).
Don't rant and rave, don't threaten, don't mention I told you about
this, but be cool and logical and point out that the US needs a
government organization that knows how airplanes fly but doesn't have a
political agenda in producing an accident report to fix the blame and
that can investigate new technologies that may do as much for aviation
as the swept wing, the supercritical airfoil, winglets, area ruling, and
highly-augmented fly-by-wire flight control systems, to name just five
NASA or NACA discoveries that have revolutionized civil and military
aviation.
Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com
"Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard
Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end...."
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Created: Fri Aug 27 23:23:14 EDT 1999