Okay so, I love nature, the natural world. As many other people do. I appreciate all sorts of different things about the planet we live on and the wonders it can produce. Places like the Antarctic, which is shockingly beautiful and shockingly desolate in equal measures. Simple things, like waterfalls, or how the countryside looks from the top of a mountain, looking down over green valleys with the sun shining across out as far as you can see. All kinds of Animals, their wonders never cease to amaze me. The ocean, too. The vast body of water which contains more weird, wonderful and terrible creatures and landscapes. But recently, i've been noticing also that for all the crap things that Humans do to each other, we are an immensely creative species and some of the things we can build when we put our minds to it are just simply astonishing. So, if you're inclined this way, I'd like to use this thread to share some of the things Man has created that you love, or that just astound you, things that beggar belief yet actually exist because of the ingenuity of Mankind.
Both of mine are aircraft, but of completely different nature. The first is a reconnaissance plane from America, used for spying and information gathering. It was a Stealth plane, designed to hide from Radar signals. Whether or not it actually was good at hiding from radars is debatable, but it didn't really matter if it was or not for reasons we'll get to later. As said it was purely reconnaissance, so it wasn't equipped with Guns or Missiles. This plane is called the SR-71, also known as The Blackbird.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...ckbirdcopy.jpg
It really is an unbelievable machine. It's job was to climb up to an altitude of 90,000 feet, where it was not visible or audible to anyone on earth. From there, it would start surveying the Earth, at speeds up to Mach 3.3, or 2,188 mph, 3,529 km/h, making it the fastest Airplane ever built. It was pretty much unshootdownable. In the 32 years it was in service, not one plane was lost in conflict. Pretty impressive when you consider:
* 3,551 Mission Sorties Flown
* 17,300 Total Sorties Flown
* 11,008 Mission Flight Hours
* 53,490 Total Flight Hours
* 2,752 hours Mach 3 Time (Missions)
* 11,675 hours Mach 3 Time (Total)
How it attained such speeds was because of a special type of engine, that along with the jet engines already onboard, Was a type of engine that sucked the air in coming at the jet and compressed it, and once it reached the exhaust it was ignited and thrust out. The faster the pilot flew, the faster the plane went. (I know that sounds dumb but I hope you get what I mean.) This Engine really helped give the Blackbird a special look. It already looks so cool, but the flames from the engine look extra cool. Sorry about the size of the picture, it was the only good picture of the flames I could find.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10.../blackbird.jpg
Now, the thing that to me makes this airplane so special, as if all that stuff wasn't enough, was the time it was built. The first model was produced in 1962, and the SR-71 was produced in 1964. This is when computers were still the size of a house and took about 10 hours to work out the Three times table. (well, you get the idea.) There are no high tech sophisticated computers onboard the Blackbird, or indeed to help plan one out. That it's never been bested is also a testament to the people who made it. I think it's totally awesome. So yeah, there's one of mine. On the other end of the scale, we have the Graf Zepplin.
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com...f_zeppelin.jpg
I would just really love to see this. Made in 1928, it was 787 feet long and 115 feet high. To watch it fly overhead must have been like watching someone fly a skyscraper over your head. I bet it was awesome.
So yes. Those are two of mine. I'd like to hear and see what creations of ours amaze you and why they amaze you.
Edit: ops, didn't realise the picture of the blackbird was THAT big. *fixes*
