Despite first flying over 50 years ago, the U-2 continues to serve in the USAF, having outlasted its Mach 3 replacement, the SR-71 (also from Lockheed).
The only people to have gone gone higher on any sort of regular basis were SR-71 pilots.
Astronautics have, of course, gone higher still, but certainly not on a regular basis.
#9 stop fooling yourself. The GH is a collosal waste of money, time and effort. The other countries that helped fund its development all now realize the mistake they made spending billions on the GH white elephant.
And as much as I don’t want to condone piracy tinyurl.com/n5rrh3 (mininova) has the full show the clip was from (plus extra stuff too), not that anyone should pirate stuff of course….
I used to watch these Aircraft..U2/TR1 take off on almost a daily basis from an disclosed place in the Middle East. I eas interesting and Loud.
What I found more intersting was everyday you would see a differnt Tail ID on the Aircraft and Some days the tail would be Black with no Identifiers…
We had Flight Line passes to go anywhere.. “except” the U2 Hanger… it was a heavily guarded/restricted hanger…
The Climb rate was interesting to watch.
Political? OK, here’s a political question: how does the ride in a U2 compare with the ride in an Avro Arrow?
What’s stopping a craft like this from just taking off into space?
The Avro Arrow was Canadian junk and we forced them to cance it. Bwahahaha….