- Right behind me is the
real life Darkstar aircraft that was used on set
during the opening scene of "Top Gun: Maverick." This hypersonic concept
jet was actually designed by Lockheed Martin's top
secret Skunk Works division. Well today, I hope you
brought your Top Gun gear 'cause we're getting an
up close look at Darkstar to learn what went into
designing this aircraft as well as how important
hypersonic technology is for the future. (chill music) Now, I'm excited to introduce you to Skunk Works engineer Brian Hershberger, who also just so happens to be the lead on the Darkstar Project. Now Brian, I've got a
lot of questions for you, but right off the bat for all the viewers out there,
can this thing actually fly? Is there a real life flyable
Darkstar out there somewhere? - Sam, with movie magic, this can fly. - Okay. - But in the real world, this is a mockup of our
hypersonic airplane concept for the Top Gun movie. But what it represents
really is our leaning edge in hypersonics and how Lockheed Martin and the Skunk Works are
really pushing the boundaries of hypersonics. And this is a futuristic vision of what that could be someday. - Now I know we've mentioned this word hypersonic several times. I also know it's probably
gonna frame a lot of what we're talking about today. So for all the viewers out there, can you explain what is hypersonics? - Well, Sam, you've probably
heard a lot about subsonic and supersonic. Hypersonic is actually Mach 5. - [Sam] Wow, okay. - And Mach 5 is a mile per second. So if you think about
trying to go cross country taking Mach from Los Angeles
and making it to New York, you'd make it there in 45 minutes. Now imagine in Top Gun, where
Maverick's going Mach 10. - Yeah. - And how insane that must be. - Crazy fast. - Crazy fast. - Now before we take a
closer look at Darkstar, I am curious what was the process like working with Paramount Pictures on "Top Gun: Maverick" and
really how that came to be? - Well, so after Paramount reached out because of Lockheed
Martin's leadership position in hypersonics, they paired us up with Daniel Simon who is a graphic designer who does a lot of concepts in movies. You've probably seen some of them, you don't know what they are. - [Sam] Yeah. - So we worked with him and
our conceptual design team to come up with some ideas. We bounce ideas back
and forth and iterated and we came up with I think iteration 43 which you see sitting
here in front of us today. - And it's like what better place to go for a futuristic hypersonic
jet than Skunk Works? I'm sure it was like a
perfect match for Paramount and for you guys product was awesome. - It was a great interaction and I think everybody on both sides is really proud with the
product we were able to produce in terms of how it's made an impact on people's vision of the future and what a great movie. Sam, the first thing you'll
notice when we're looking towards the front of the the Dark Star is how highly swept it
is and how sleek it is. That's what you see when
you go really fast, right? You got a lot of air coming around. You want to be like a dart. - Like disappears. - On top of that, we bury the cockpit. Unlike most cockpits
that sit up a little bit, we bury it down. And if you actually know what
our X 59 demonstrator is, that's doing supersonic boom technology, similar design. It's getting that forward
vision in different ways but still being able to see
out the sides a little bit. - And I love how it still has the captain Pete Mitchell Maverick. - Absolutely. - And also it's interesting to me, right? It doesn't look like you can
see out the front, right? So you've got the side view,
which I know in the movie he had it like kind of built into display but just an interesting feature. - Absolutely. But there's technology that
can allow you to do that today. - And you know need it. Now Brian, in the movie
when Maverick is about to approach Mach 10, we start to see the
cockpit glass heating up and I love that attention
to detail that was included. So I'm curious from your perspective, what would you say are those
main challenges that heat and friction present when
going at hypersonic speeds? - So Sam, remember Mach
5 is where we start to see hypersonics be defined. - Yeah. - And it's defined there
because that's when air starts to break down because
of how fast you're going. You start to see plasma
show up around the airplane just like on the space shuttle reentry. So what that means is you
have to have materials that can survive these
intense temperatures. You have to still build them
light enough to be able to fly. So it takes a whole lot of
development and technology in terms of how you build the craft to make it survive the environment. - So in the movie, obviously
we had Maverick flying, but to my understanding the future of hypersonics is largely unmanned. So I'm curious from your perspective, do you ever think we will have a pilot in the cockpit of
something going hypersonic? - Well Sam, remember we
talked a little bit about the space shuttle. - Yeah. - Space shuttle went over Mach 20 when it reentered the atmosphere
and it had people in it. - Sure. - So it is possible, but
in terms of the mission, it really depends on
what the mission needs. Sometimes you need the gray matter inside the cockpit to make decisions, and other times you don't. And that's really what
will determine whether or not you need to have one or not. So is it harder to have a cockpit? Yes. But is it impossible? No. - When I was in the theaters watching this for the first time, I love seeing those little details like the Skunk Works logo on the tail, some Lockheed branding mixed throughout. Are there any other Easter
eggs you guys included that you can share? - Well Sam, the Skunk Works on the tails is something we like to do
when we get airplanes out there when we can. Try to have a little bit of the mystique carried over. The Easter eggs that we ended up creating are mostly in the cockpit. What you'll find is that there's a team that built this airplane very
short Skunk Works timeline. And so as they did that, they found creative ways to get
some of their stamp on that. So you'll see some initials on switches and some on the panel that you can pick up in the movie if you're really sharp. Another thing you're gonna notice is how large the engines
are on this airplane. What do you think it
takes to go hypersonic? Lots of thrust. - Yeah. And in the movie
after Maverick had taken off, I see he says switching to scramjet. Right? And then it looks like there's a lot of power
converted to the engines allowing him to go even faster. So I'm curious, can you explain
what actually a scramjet is? - So scramjet is the engine
that you would want to use when you go above Mach 5. - Okay. - Now you think about
like how an SR-71 works it has a normal engine in it
with like rotating machinery and as you bring the air in, you slow it down nicely to burn
that air at subsonic speeds. There's a D 21 drone. Have you ever heard of that? - Yeah, it went on top of. - It flies off of Blackbird. So it starts off at about Mach 3. - Yeah. - And what it does is, rather than his use a rotating engine, it actually takes the pressure
from the air coming in and uses it just to combust the air cause it's already hot enough. It does that subsonically. Guess what a scramjet does? Is it burns that air inside
that engine super sonically. Could you imagine lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it lit? That's what this does. Another thing we paid a lot
of attention to detail on would be, you know, kind of
how you would shape the wing of a hypersonic airplane
that still has to land and take off from a runway. - It kind of reminds me of
the wing shapes on the SR-71 that we were talking about. Did that kind of give you
guys a little inspiration? - I guess that's some inspiration, but it's the design guidance you need to use to do
those sorts of things. - So it works on that. It's the same sort of principle. - Same principles. - Yeah, it's so thin. I mean it's, it's just,
it's so cool looking. I don't even know what to say. - They gotta be super thin to go fast. - That's true. Now Brian, I'm assuming you
had to work on this project in secrecy, which you're
probably pretty used to when it comes to
working at Skunk Works, but what was it like to finally be able to share this project with the world when Top Gun Maverick finally came out? - Sam, you're spot on. But to add to that, four
years we had to wait since we actually built
this and had it on set until the movie came out. What was really impactful
was when even the team that didn't work on it went and saw it. We got some feedback from
them that really made me proud because they were happy to
see that the Skunk Works had a part in that. That they were able to
see get their own work where they don't get to
share it with any people now they could kind of share these are the kind of things we could do. And that really made the
whole team that contributed to this really, really
proud for the work they did and really happy how
the whole film came out. - Well, on behalf of so many
aviation and Top Gun lovers, thank you for all the
work you did on this. I mean, it turned out incredible. And I forgot to say I love the hat. I got the shirt on. - Awesome man. Thank you Sam. - Now you may have noticed
the hints we've been dropping throughout the video and that's because you really
can't talk about Dark Star without mentioning the
aircraft that helped inspire both its design and functionality. Built back in the 1960s, this platform still holds the record today for the fastest manned air
breathing jet to ever fly. Yep. I'm talking about the
legendary SR-71 Blackbird. Lucky enough for us, there
just so happened to be one on display right next to Dark Star. And you guys already know, I
definitely had to check it out. - Well Sam, I know you've
had a chance to talk to Brian a little bit about Dark
Star and going hypersonic, but here the SR-71, this
is where it all started. - I'm actually a massive fan of the SR-71. It was actually the name
of the squadron I was in at the Air Force Academy,
the badass Blackbird. Surprisingly, this is the
first time I've ever seen one in person and it's incredible looking. - I actually started
my career on the SR-71. - Full circle for you. - It is. - That's awesome. Well, I'm excited to learn a
little bit about it from you and what an incredible aircraft. - Awesome. Let's get into it. - So Keith, I imagine
when designing the SR-71 there are quite a lot of setbacks and challenges that the Skunk
Works team had to navigate. Can you talk a little bit about those and how they paved the way for
hypersonic technology today? - As Brian mentioned,
when you go hypersonic or in this case a Mach 3, you have a lot of heat
and the heat builds up. The skin of this vehicle
actually gets to 500 degrees. And so you have to have
materials that can handle that kind of temperature. Here we add titanium was the solution. Titanium is an interesting material because it's very hard for manufacturing. So we had to even build separate
manufacturing techniques for this. Along with that, how do you
keep the aircraft cooled? Turns out fueled is the way of doing that. And this actually special fuel, JP -7 that was developed just for the SR-71. - So Keith, why is there
such an urgent need for hypersonic technology
today, especially to make it a critical capability
for the US military? - Well, as you've seen
in the news, we have both hypersonic vehicles that are
being tested by the Russians and by the Chinese. And so our adversaries
have these capabilities. What makes hypersonics so
important is that the amount of time from when we can
actually see a vehicle, to we can track it, to we can target it until
we can prosecute that, is a finite amount of time. And when it's going fast,
it makes it hard to hit. So for us, we wanna make
sure that we're staying par with our adversaries, but actually we wanna always be ahead. Well, Sam, come with me for a minute. I'm gonna talk to you
a little bit about some of the other things that we had
to do for heat on the SR-71. So notice these tires are silver in color because they're infused
with aluminum that helps protect these tires from all the heat. You'll also notice behind me
there's a cavity that we use to protect that. The other thing that's really interesting is the amount of hydraulic
fluid that we have that we have to keep cool here. So we had to devise a
whole new hydraulic fluid and that is really cold when we take off. So we have to heat it up so that it starts to be
fluid for the aircraft. - It's just crazy to me. I mean this thing was
built what, late fifties early sixties when it
flew for the first time, and still technology to this day there hasn't really been
something that been faster. - Yeah, it's very amazing all of the engineering that Kelly Johnson and that team did to
develop this aircraft. - So to my understanding, Lockheed Martin really has
been the industry leader in developing new hypersonic
technology for what, the past 60 years? - Yes. We started
thinking back to the SR-71 and we've been advancing, in fact, in the 2010 timeframe, we
had a program called Falcon. In Falcon, we had a
vehicle that went Mach 20. So you get an idea of that. We're pushing technology now both for the Air Force,
the Navy and the Army, and different hypersonic
programs that are current. - So on that, can you talk a little bit about that hypersonic technology
that Lockheed Martin's you know, leading from the front? - Sure. You know, some of
the things that are really the important to keep is
what do we need to be doing for engine technology? So advancements in this scramjets. How do we get those so that
they're much less expensive than they were in the past? And how do we keep going with
advanced materials, right? You think about a Darkstar and all of that glow that you had on
the nose when in the film. How do we have that so that our hypersonic
vehicles are survivable? - So Keith, I know you
probably can't share too much but what can you tell us about
the future of hypersonics? What can we expect? - You'll see advancements
in some of the technologies like sensors and adding communications. You'll see advancements in
some of the ways that we manufacture things. Think about the scramjets. We can use additive manufacturing to make scramjets much less expensive. We'll also use the digital
transformation to be able to build vehicles much cheaper. Our goal is to be able to
build hypersonic vehicles that are mainstream. They're not that niche type of vehicle. They're just common. - And maybe, just maybe, a
real flyable Darkstar, right? - Well, in the Skunk Works, if you can imagine it, we like to be able to implement it. Just maybe. - Well Keith, thank you so much to both you and Brian
for showing us around. I think it's safe to say
there's a lot to be excited for. I know I need to find
a way to get out here and do an entire video on the SR-71, but this was definitely a good taste. Now to anyone watching,
if you have a question about Darkstar or hypersonics, I'd love to hear it. Leave it down in the comments below. Thanks so much for
tuning in and as always, I'll catch you next time.
