Airbus A380 landing in a crosswind Airplane

during early flight testing at Area 51 with the A-12s, Jim Eastham told me that A-12 #128 flew as fast as any A-12 during testing. On the particular day that the A-12 red lined everything.

“During a routine top speed envelope expansion flight, A-12 #128 was having a hard time getting past Mach 2.7 as the outside air was too warm. The reason for the flight test card that day was to validate a new inlet bypass door schedule.

“Jim said he dropped the nose down a bit to see if he could at least reach Mach 3.0. Out of nowhere, Jim hit good air and in the dive with good air he red lined everything. He went into his descent profile and headed back to the test site.”

Goodall concludes:

“When all was said and done; and for a very brief 15 seconds, Jim hit Mach 3.56, or just under 2,400 mph. Mind you, this was a one-time event and was never duplicated.”

Shortages typically lead to higher prices, and this is exactly what happened here as well. As a result, the cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries started climbing—a development that virtually no renewable energy forecaster had anticipated.

Bloomberg reported this month that solar panel prices had surged by more than 50 percent in the past 12 months alone. The price of wind turbines is up 13 percent and battery prices are rising for the first time ever, the report noted. //

That lending problem for the mining industry as well as oversupply in some segments of the metals market led to lower investments in new mines in recent years. That added to an already existing problem of falling ore grades: now, a miner needs to dig out a lot more ore to find the same amount of copper, for instance, than they had to 20 years ago.

This means that the extraction of a ton of copper has become costlier even without the rising demand. With the rising demand projections, the outlook for copper and other critical metals is definitely bullish. But a bullish outlook for copper means higher prices for windmills and solar farms, and for EVs as well.

APUs became common in the 1960s, with Boeing including the first commercial APU in the 727 in 1963. While the technology had existed in military planes as early as World War 1, their move to commercial flying came as flying became more popular.

The presence of an APU in the 727 allowed airlines to avoid reliance on ground power at smaller airports. The turbine came to be included in all subsequent Boeing aircraft, including the 737 and 747 families. Since then, all modern jets and even some turboprops have come with their own APUs.