That is COOL!
Love it!
What is the case that the pilots carry with them to the cockpit?
What do the chase cars do during landing?
And, can you see stars once you get that high? All the pics I see the sky is just black and there are no stars??
Nitrogen/oxygen source for the suit. The main body of the suit is filled with nitrogen, there is an air dam around the neck, above that in the helmet is pure oxygen You don't want to breath regular air, because you would get the bends. Same with all the astronauts before the shuttle (which operated with sea level pressure air, costing them tremendous weight but was compatible with Soyuz/Mir/ISS and requiring no special pre-breathing - except for space walks since there is no way to make a soft suit that runs on 15 psi air).
The chase cars call out the altitudes, since the U-2 is one of the most difficult of all airplanes to land. It gets in ground effect and just floats, even with everything hung out to create extra drag. Also, gives the pilot group a reason to buy the latest hot rod cars on government money, so it will be fast enough and accelerate fast enough to catch it after it passes.
Probably. The issue with this (and the fact that you also can't see stars in pictures from the moon) is that with the earth in the FOV, the exposure settings are set for that, which makes the stars far too faint to be recorded. Same reason you cannot see stars in the daytime, your pupils contract to handle the sunlight and ground reflections, they expand at night to improve night vision, also passing enough light to see stars. Film in particular has a rather narrow range of acceptable exposures, 7-8 "stops" or less, same with digital, that is about a factor of 512. The even a bright star is about 25 billion times less bright than the Sun.
Brett
Topic: U-2 (Read 1926 times)