The Slow Demise of the CIA's A-12

The companion blog to this episode is over at Medium: https://amyshirateitel.medium.com/the... *** I forgot to add the card of conversions at about the 2:30 mark, and I don't want to spend hours exporting another version, so here's that paragraph with other measurements! "The U-2 was 63 feet long (19.20 meters) with a wingspan of 103 feet (31.3944 meters), had an operational altitude of 70,000 feet (21,336 meters) with a 2,000-mile range (3,218.68 kilometers), and a top speed around Mach 0.8. The A-12, by design, had an altitude of about 90,000 feet (27,432 meters), a top speed of Mach 3.2, and a range of 4,120 miles total (6,630.49 kilometers) or 3,800nm range at altitude (4372.96 miles or 7,037.6 kilometers). It was, in short, a significant improvement." *** Fighting for Space: https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Space... Breaking the Chains of Gravity: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Chain... *** The Full Cold War Aerial Espionage Series! Part 1:    • U-2: How the Spy Plane No One Wanted Got B...   Part 2:    • The "Invisible" U-2 Immediately Became a P...   Part 3:    • What Really Happened when Gary Powers was ...   Part 4:    • America Spying with the Corona Satellites   Part 5:    • The CIA's A-12 was Basically Obsolete Befo...   *** Want to help keep The Vintage Space alive and get access to my Discord server at the same time? I've also got a PATREON PAGE! Any help is so hugely appreciated.   / amyshirateitel   You can also join via YouTube Memberships for the same benefits. Connect on Facebook:   / amyshirateitel   Instagram:   / amyshirateitel   Twitter:   / amyshirateitel   Book me on Cameo: https://www.cameo.com/amyshirateitel *** Music: Brittle Rille by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... *** Wardrobe: Vixen by Micheline Pitt. Not sponsored or anything, I just love her and her company values and want to shout out an incredible brand!