A few years ago I read and enjoyed Skunk Works, about Lockheed’s legendary Advanced Development Project. I just recently got around to listening to the audiobook version of Kelly: More Than My Share of It All, the autobiography of Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, the famed aerospace engineer behind the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird.
A few things stood out as at least mildly prescient for a book written in 1985. First, he expected planes to become pilotless soon. His experience with the D-21 drone in the 1960s helped there. Second, he mentioned that an SR-71 variant, the YF-12, was designed as a high-altitude interceptor with missiles that, when launched, quickly went hypersonic, because the aircraft was already going Mach 3.