EricD says:

Hey! I heard you like gauges, so we put some gauges with your gauges so you can gauge while you gauge.

bobbo, junior areospace platform engineer says:

From the embiggum: “As it screams through the air at three times the speed of sound, this jet needs to keep the air flowing through the engines down around 500 mph.” /// So, how can this jet go x3 the speed of sound when the air going into the engine is subsonic????

And here is the real trick: did you know the air coming out the back end of the engine is also subsonic?

How can that be??

As an int’l pastry chef, I know all about controlling my burners temperatures and the effect that has on a nice souffle. The answer late in the day or on correct/near correct stabs in the dark.

GregAllen says:

What a cool photo. The few times I’ve sat in jet cockpits, I’ve wondered how they keep track of all the gauges (is it gauge or gage?) — even in the older ones.

I remember reading an article which said that airplane engineers have been working since WWII on how to solve gauge-overload but never with full success.

GregAllen says:

The Wired link is worth clicking on. I liked the Dreamliner cockpit.

Here’s what it says about information overload:

>> Dreamliner’s 100 systems produce and process several terabytes of data during a single transcontinental flight. That’s why it took two dozen designers, pilots, and engineers—plus more than a decade of “format management” research—to figure out what data to present and how to present it.

BTW, does anyone else think that Wired is becoming one of the best sites on the web? I love it.

Steve S says:

Cool! A few years ago they had an open cockpit presentation at Blackbird airpark in Palmdale, CA. I have pictures of several of my daughters sitting in the cockpit of an SR71. An extraordinary aircraft that still looks futuristic almost 50 years after it first flew.

GetSmart says:

If you know how to read all those gauges you don’t have to use the windows all that much.

bobbo, more tech for a pastry chef? Where are the recipes? says:

No takers huh? Bubba?

Its an electronic environment at 70K + Feet. Looking outside the cockpit still doesn’t tell you where you are. No, thats the job of instruments.

Mainly that big compass just below the artificial horizon. It is set to the magnetic north pole but has multiple inputs for radio aids of various sorts but also more importantly the inertial navigation system===mostly just keeping the aircraft on the center line of one course or another==which again is mostly done by the auto pilot.

Probably the last aircraft that of necessity required a pilot, computer reliability being what it was those days and the uncertainty of flying into sub space.

I guess I’m old school. Still want a chef to taste the final product before I sit down to eat.

I’m in the mood. Here’s another basic skills question: “You are over a mountain range with no where to land. You lose all your engines. What do you do?” If you don’t get the answer correctly, you don’t get to fly the SR-71.

Hee, hee.

bobbo, more tech for a pastry chef? Where are the recipes? says:

Skeptic you rake! No, you ejeculated back when you put your go-fast pants on. Thats actually a good answer as I failed to add there where no parachutes, escape pods, or hang gliders available. The actual answer given was “you crash” which was a heads up on doing your pre-flight planning to avoid such flight paths when you could. Not that relevant with modern jet aircraft but still good general advice about terrain clearance.

Something those jerk pilots in the Blackwater “flew into a mountain in clear weather” having so much fun as they were should have paid attention to. Yes, terrain clearance. Same issue when bringing a flaming souffle out over the heads of our valued patrons–ie, it never happens.

bobbo, to infinity and beyond says:

Well, thanks skeptic. I fly jets, I scuba dive, I travel, I read, I bake. Valuable experiences that get one outside of one’s self. Then I blog which is about the most self contained anally oriented activity I can think of, other than serving as RNC Chair.

As you express interest, the thing about measuring your speed “sonically”–as a function of sound wave and when the barrier is reached–its a variable depending on density, materials but especially temperature. And those exhaust gases being expelled in after a 13 stage afterburner are actually quite hot, thereby increasing the “absolute” air speed of the molecules while staying below the sound barrier in relative terms. Few people connect those dots.