by kleinbl00

Cunningham explained that the flight profile for ISINGLASS would be unlike anything ever built before. “It would be launched, say, off the coast of Spain. It would promptly ascend to 125,000 feet [38,100 meters] under throttling, and you’d point it in the general direction of east, let’s say, and pour the coal to it, and then shut it off. It would go tootling along at roughly Mach 22,” just below orbital velocity, he said. “You’d take yourself all kinds of pictures all the way across Russia,” and then recover at a classified location, probably Groom Lake in the Nevada desert. “Damn near circumnavigate the globe, you know,” Cunningham added.