One of the biggest stars of Top Gun: Maverick next to Tom Cruise, the futuristic Darkstar hypersonic plane will appear this weekend at the Aerospace Valley Air Show at Edwards California Air Force Base. Rumors about this have been circulating for several days, and today the organizers of the shows officially confirmed that the Darkstar model will be presented at the static exhibition as part of the STEM Expo, i.e. a scientific exhibition organized mainly for children.
In the presence of Darkstar at Edwards, it is also about children. On the first day, approximately 12,000 students from nearby high schools will attend the Aerospace Valley Air Show. Lockheed hopes to encourage them to study engineering and explore various fields of aeronautics. And the best from the perspective of the Bethesda group – currently looking for additional employees to perform new long-term contracts – would be if these young people started applying for a job at Lockheed in a few years, and the latter could choose the best of the best.
Yes, the @LockheedMartin Darkstar IS at Edwards and will have its world debut at the 2022 @AVAirShow this weekend!
To showcase the future, it was only right local #STEM students received the first look!
The Darkstar is on display all weekend at #AvAirshow. #TopGunMaverick pic.twitter.com/WcMbWYFF5Z
– Aerospace Valley Air Show (@AVAirShow) October 13, 2022
Darkstar became famous in the aviation world not so much for his appearance in Top Gun: Maverick, but for the fact that Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division was involved in its development. His contribution led to the development of a sensible, realistic airframe and cockpit for the film. The engineers from Skunk Works did such a good job that the Chinese were convinced for some time that it was a real experimental plane and (allegedly – producer Jerry Bruckheimer claims to have learned this from the US Navy) moved the spy satellite to take good pictures Darkstar.
The machine uses many technical solutions that can potentially be introduced in new generation airplanes. A particularly interesting concept is the complete lack of a cabin windscreen and windows placed only on the sides. The pilot can read data from instruments using screens and augmented reality placed in front of his eyes.
This solution, called EFVS (Enhanced Flight Vision System), was taken from a real project developed in Skunk Works – X-59 QueSST (Quiet SuperSonic Technology), which was to verify the possibility of reducing the sound thunder generated in flight at Mach 1 and higher speeds to acceptable levels. . There, the elongated shape of the nose makes it impossible to install a transparent windshield. To fulfill its function, it would have to be over 5 meters long. Instead, QueSST will have two high-resolution cameras and a screen in the cabin.
Vision of the X-59 in flight over an idyllic landscape. If the project assumptions prove successful, it will open the way to the creation of supersonic airplanes that will produce noise comparable to classic jet communicators.
(NASA)
The very name Darkstar was probably also suggested by Lockheed Martin’s engineers. In the 1990s, the company worked with Boeing on a hard-to-detect HALE-class reconnaissance UAV called the RQ-3 DarkStar. It made a successful maiden flight in March 1996, but the program was canceled due to high costs and uncertainty about the future of the structure. The avant-garde aerodynamics turned out to be too much of a challenge, making the RQ-3 unstable in flight. Four prototypes were produced, two of which flew into the air and one crashed.
RQ-3A DarkStar (second prototype) in flight over the Dryden Research Facility at Edwards Base.
(NASA / Carla Thomas)
Officially, the film Darkstar was created thanks to the inspiration of the SR-71 Blackbird, but in practice it is much closer to the artistic visions of the SR-72 known for almost ten years. At first glance, the similarity of the airframe is visible – a relatively small span, two engine nacelles under the airfoil root. The only difference in the basic airframe configuration is the use of a double vertical stabilizer instead of a single fin.
Here’s what we know about the SR-72 – Lockheed’s Mach 6 Blackbird successor https://t.co/7E5v9ap6VB pic.twitter.com/8uRoBRQIhv
– Hurricane Group, Inc (@HurricaneGrpInc) December 26, 2018
However, not only the shape of the airframe is important, but also the propulsion, combining a pair of two-flow turbofan engines (providing good flying properties at subsonic and low supersonic speed) with a pair of scramjet engines, i.e. jet engines with a supersonic combustion chamber (allowing to achieve hypersonic speed). All the similarities, however, can be a coincidence of the inexorable laws of physics.
The current state of the art of aircraft propulsion means that this propulsion configuration is considered optimal for hypersonic airplanes. As the shape of the aircraft adapts to the type of engine, never the other way around, the scope of the possible shape of the airframe immediately narrows down. In addition, you have to remember that the aerodynamic drag increases with the square of the speed, so wide-span wings are completely out of the question.
Some call it movie magic.
Our Skunk Works® team calls it defining the future. # TopGun
– Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin) June 3, 2022
On the other hand, these similarities take on additional spice when we consider what was written on Lockheed Martin’s website on the Top Gun Participation Subpage: Darkstar’s can be more than just fiction. They can be real.
Of course, this is only a fragment of advertising material, so it is difficult to take it completely seriously. But it cannot be denied that these words became the fuel that fueled kilometer-long speculation on the Internet and beyond. Is it really somewhere in the depths of Skunk Works that a real SR-72 is created, confusingly similar to the Darkstar? Or are these enigmatic words referring to individual Darkstar components such as EFVS and scramjet?
See also: QF-16 participate in the AIM-260 missile testing program
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