Books

Skunk Works 

The story of Lockheed’s justifiably fetishized engineering A team as told by the man who ran it. 

Let me start by saying that this book is fun. Spellbinding even.

But it’s also a piece of critical education on how to get shit done inside a behemoth bureaucracy. In short: split off a group of the top performers, give them important tasks, and install a leader at the top who insulates them from the rest of the organization’s bullshit. 

Lockheed churned out a parade of the greatest hits of military aviation with this approach (p38, U2, sr71, etc). And the whole startup scene applies roughly the same model to solving tech problems. A good startup is, itself, like a Skunk Works. 

It has just enough aeronautical engineering to give it an exotic flavor without bogging it down. Ben Rich tells just the right number of stories about the planes’ exploits in the world to make you feel how high the stakes were. 

It’s even better than you’d imagine. Five stars for its class.

Kelly Johnson / Ben Rich is up there with one of the greatest of all time aerospace duos like Gene Kranz / Glynn Lunney (Mission Directors from the Apollo / Mercury / Gemini program)

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks

Also:
- I love the SR-71s
- I also love F-117s
- U-2 was a great piece of engineering that lasted surprisingly long as well

Just overall great vehicles, that defined an era.

Yeah I've come to the conclusion that my answer is undoubtedly SR-71

Why:
- Operated at 85,000 ft, at over Mach 3 (~2100 mph)
- No SR-71 was ever shot down, because Mach 3
- 1 hour flight from SF to NYC
- A special titanium body out of it from scratch for it
- Absolutely bonkers

https://warpcast.com/jayme/0xba21812e

The SR-71 is still the goat

https://warpcast.com/july/0x0c910c9b

This book also is just one of those books that ticks off my boxes:
- very cool history of aviation / aerospace
- really cool project that took years to do that no one believed in
- took a small groupd of talented and hard nosed rag tag folks to get it done

For those not familiar, it's also worth knowing about the only time one of these were shot down, and the pilot who miraculously escaped before returning to meet the person who did it.

For those not familiar, it's also worth knowing about the only time one of these were shot down, and the pilot who miraculously escaped before returning to meet the person who did it. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd88lzCWjpA

Just found out that they made a documentary from it a few years ago. Would still recommend the book over it, but good to know as an entry point for those who prefer to learn about it this way.