This view shows both the engine inlets themselves and the shape of the fuselage that houses the inlets leading to the intakes of each of its six engines.

Here is an exhaust view of the six GE YJ93 engines.

Often jet engines in development are flown on surrogate aircraft. The GE YJ93 was first flown on a B-58 at Edwards AFB, as seen here.

The XB-70 boasted some other unique design characteristics, including its use of compression lift and the ability to droop its wingtips to increase directional stability. For a detailed project description of the XB-70 program see NASA’s website here.

Airplanes by Design features photographs of aircraft from a test pilot perspective, highlighting aeronautical engineering characteristics and flight test facts. To see all of the these pictures (and many more of this aircraft and it’s unique design characteristics), click here. You will always be able to access any of these pictures by selecting the Flickr icon in the top menu bar.

Click here to read more about this airplane.

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NASA has several other XB-70 videos here.

Check out @FlightTestFact on Twitter for more flight test safety references, videos, and information daily.

Airplanes inspire and amaze us, especially as they dance through the skies accomplishing their stunning aerial feats. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unique videos that capture test flights by daring test pilots, pushing the very envelope of knowledge and ability. I think it makes people believe that with enough persistence, dreams do take flight.

I also believe that a video exponentially improves our ability to use picture to communicate 10,000 words, and this is not only one of the fundamental ATOMs but also an elementary and critical element in the strategy to inform and invest. These are just a few of the reasons that this weekly video column exists.

The end of the poem is as follows:

The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

Bad statistics is like the observations of blind men describing an elephant.

On the other hand, consider another blind man who had once seen an elephant in his childhood, or who, since he had become blind, heard stories from those who personally seen an elephant.  Armed with these descriptions, this blind man collects the same six pieces of data described above. Wouldn’t his observations make much more sense?

Good statistics starts with a question–it happens when you know, loosely speaking, what you are looking for, and you establish analytical methods for finding data that will help you answer the question you’ve asked.

Good statistics continues with an antithetical question–it considers what happens when you assume the opposite and examines the data in this light as well.

Good statistics is very powerful. It’s like a seesaw…but you’ll have to wait until next week to read about that.