Brilliant conversation!
I've got to say that the numbers and physics can be brain-numbing. And this just emphasises the achievement of all those brown-overalled slide-rule operators who didn't let common sense get in the way, and made an airliner do Mach 2, and go from London to New York in under three and a half hours whilst burning about the same amount of fuel as a 747-2.
The Blackbird was a phenomenal achievement, a magnificent aircraft, but to achieve supersonic flight with an airliner, using more restrictive legislation (TSS) than existed for blunties at the time was nothing short of miraculous. Our equivalent of the Apollo programme.
But as a simple pilot who lived under those brown overall coat-tails (and was bloody luck to do so), <<without the use of reheat and with staggeringly low fuel flow values>> brought back to mind one of my most treasured memories of the experience (apart from those nights in pubs around Filton):
You plugged in reheat (the proper name for afterburners) at 0.95. She climbed at Vmo. M 1.0 went past without a gin & tonic spilt down the back. The ramps dropped at (from memory - Dude?) M1.3. But the real cool bit was at M1.7. You had a burn of about 12000 KGS/HR per engine. You cut the reheat. The fuel flow dropped to about half that - 6 tonnes per hour / engine. She didn't drop out the sky. She just carried on reaching - at FL500 hitting M2.0 - and just did what the designers intended - cover distance at about 20 nms/min. No fuss. No reheat. Day in - day out.
I suppose that's the practical experience of this thread's title.
Brilliance. Pure, original physics and engineering brilliance.
Hey ho.