Northern Lights as seen from inside a U2 spy plane(theaviationist.com) |
Northern Lights as seen from inside a U2 spy plane(theaviationist.com) |
Surprised that these photos were allowed to be released from a recent military mission in a spy plane.
It's hard to glean much insight into what the mission might have been, but I thought the military had to approve the release of content through a lengthy declassification process.
I wonder where U2 are deployed today. I thought they were an easy target for ground missiles...
> A few years ago I met a retired U2 pilot ... as I talked with this man what impressed me the most weren't his deadpan tales of high adventure, the 'incidents' with Russian MiGs and so on, but his battle against boredom. The nine-hour solo missions. The twelve-hour solo missions. 'Wasn't that horrendous?', I asked. 'It could get a little lonely up there,' he replied. But there was something about how he said it that made it sound a state still longed-for. And then he said something else. 'I used to read,' he said, unexpectedly, and with that his face changed, and his voice too: his deadpan Yeager drawl slipped, was replaced with a shy, childlike enthusiasm. 'The Once and Future King. By T.H.White,' he said. 'Have you heard of him? He's an English writer. It's a great book. I used to take that up, read it on the way out and on the way back.' [pp31-2]
Intuitively I would have thought that, if they are on the edge of the atmosphere, the lights would be lower than the plane, no?