From the Cockpit to the Page: Meet Blackbird Author Terry Pappas
Having an extraordinary experience and knowing how to share it are two different achievements. A pilot understands the world of flight through training and practice. An author must find a way to make that world meaningful to people who were not there. Terry Pappas’s journey connects those two challenges. His published biography describes a 41-year […]
Why the SR-71 Blackbird Still Captures Our Imagination
An aircraft does not have to be new to make us wonder about the future. The SR-71 Blackbird first flew on December 22, 1964. Developed by a Lockheed team led by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, it belonged to a family of aircraft whose origins reached back into the secrecy of the late 1950s. [NASA] Yet the […]
The Photographs That Waited 25 Years to Become a Book
Some books begin with an outline. Others begin with something their authors cannot bring themselves to put away. For Terry Pappas, part of the story behind SR-71, The Blackbird, Q&A (2nd Edition) begins with a binder of photographs—and an idea that stayed with him for decades. According to Pappas’s account in the book description, he […]
What Was It Really Like to Fly the SR-71 Blackbird?
Knowing how fast an aircraft could fly is one thing. Understanding what it was like to sit at the controls is something else entirely. The SR-71 Blackbird invites both kinds of curiosity. NASA describes an aircraft designed to cruise at Mach 3.2—more than three times the speed of sound—at altitudes reaching approximately 85,000 feet. Those […]