You could feel the gooey parts of your body, for lack of a better term, that this bag of water that were made out of vibrating and your ribs moving around from the war of this jet engine.

And you see this flame about 20 feet long coming out of the aircraft.

It is one of the most incredible sights that you can just imagine.

It's just an absolute definition of power.

Yeah. definition of power. It was a time when computers were in their infancy.

Few of them existed.

They were incredibly expensive, enormous, and had less processing power than an iPhone.

This was before virtual prototyping and all of the advanced tools engineers have at their disposal today.

Using little more than slide rules, pencils, bar napkins, and anything they could find to commit their ideas to paper,

a group of engineers designed one of the most

advanced aircraft in aviation history, an aircraft that still holds the world record as the fastest

manned aircraft.

The year was 1958, and the aircraft they designed was the SR-71.

Welcome to the first episode of Inside Skunk Works, a podcast that brings to light the dark classified world of the secret Lockheed Martin organization.

Founded in 1943 by engineer and pioneer Kelly Johnson, the skunkworks has a legacy

of challenging what is impossible and making it a reality.

Skunk Works,

I got briefed on Senior Crown, which was the code word for the SR71 Blackbird.

This is Steve Justice, someone you'll hear a lot from in future episodes.

He's a modern skunkworks grandfather and a born aerospace geek who worked on many black

programs throughout his career. You might recognize the F-117 Nighthawk and the YF-22,

the prototype that later became the F-22 Raptor.

...