Satellites and autonomous drones have reduced our need for cutting-edge spy planes and stealth fighters. So Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works, creators of the SR-71 Blackbird, have now built a unique robot called the Spider that can crawl over the surface of blimps to find and fix tiny pinhole leaks.
In the late 1950s, at the dawn of the Space Age, the idea that a wingless vehicle could somehow generate lift just from its body shape was seen as beyond preposterous. But less than a decade later, this early forerunner of the Space Shuttle proved the design far more science…
No, that’s not a scene from The Right Stuff. It’s 14 pilots of the high-tech Lockheed U-2 in full pressure suits posing like action heroes in front of their beautiful plane. Eat it, Ed Harris.