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[EN VIDÉO] Kézako: how to make an airplane fly? Around the world, about one plane takes off every second. A century after its beginnings, aviation has become one of the safest means of transport. Like a bird, an airplane flies because it has wings, which generate a force called lift. The University of Lille 1, with the Kézako program, explains this principle to us in this short didactic video.
Aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin benefits from the success of Top Gun: Maverick to slip in its wake and communicate around one of the star planes of the opus: the famous hypersonic jet Darkstar. Noticed by the public — and also by China which supposedly reoriented a satellite on this futuristic device to observe it — the concept developed by the design office Skunk Works from Lockheed Martin is considered hyperrealistic.
The aircraft recalls the features of the SR-71 Blackbird, the US stealth intelligence aircraft Air Force which worked until the end of the 90s. video published on the Lockheed Martin website, the members of the Skunk Works division explain that they were inspired by this aviation star which could fly at more than Mach 3.3 and at an altitude of nearly 26,000 meters.
Behind the scenes of the realization of the scenes with the life-size model of the Darkstar of Top Gun: Maverick. © Lockheed Martin
Stunning realism, but an improbable aircraft
They also took the forms of the SR-72its future replacement capable of flying at Mach 6, but this time without a crew, since it is a drone. For more than realismthe model of the concept was built in full size with a cabin equipped with a structure solid and also a cockpit that has all the aspects of a real one. It has flight controls and avionics that are very compelling even to the most knowledgeable in aviation.
The designers and technicians who came up with this concept explained that they had cheated a little to make the plane a little more elegant and racy. For this, they lowered and flattened it. Still, the arrival of such a hypersonic aircraft piloted is unlikely in the future due to the constraints necessary to carry and protect a human being at this speed. No offense to Maverick, the future of advanced aviation is clearly promised to drones.
Top Gun: the fictitious hypersonic plane would have worried China
The hypersonic jet piloted by Tom Cruise in the next Top Gun looks so real that China moved its spy satellite to photograph it according to director Jerry Bruckheimer.
Article by Sylvain Biget published on
Scheduled three years late, the next Top Gun airs May 27 in the United States. In this sequel to the 1986 opus, Tom Cruise, a.k.a Maverick, instructs the best Top Gun pilots for a special mission. In addition to the P-51 Mustang, the F/A-18 Hornet, the F-35C or even a stealth Russian Su-57, one of the stars will be the Darkstar. A hypersonic aircraft fictitious top secret whose model would have worried the Chinese according to the admission even of the director Jerry Bruckheimer. He claimed that the Navy would have explained to him that a chinese satellite was reoriented to take snapshots of the device. Information that seems fanciful, since it seems unlikely that the American army could know the intentions of the Chinese and even less that it informed the director. That said, the detection of the redirection of a satellite towards the filming area may have taken place, but it is difficult to know if it is not a bluff to create a little more buzz.
In the clip hold my hand sung by Lady Gaga we can see stealthily the Darkstar which would have attracted the attention of China to the point of redirecting its satellites. © Lady Gaga YouTube
Lockheed Martin’s Realistic Boost
On the other hand, the famous Darkstar is sufficiently realistic so that it can effectively fool a foreign intelligence service. It must be said that the aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin and more precisely Skunk Works, its advanced projects division, was involved in the design of this fictitious model. It would have been built on a large scale in collaboration with the film crew. Skunk Works is the office working on the concept of SR-72 hypersonic drone that Futura has already mentioned. This drone is intended as the replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird designed in the 1960s. It seems that in Top Gun: Maverickthe Darkstar is nothing like drone and that its pilot is obviously Maverick, the crème de la crème of 1980s US Navy pilots with a few more wrinkles.
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