As a bit of an aviation fan, I was interested in the aircraft posing as Tony Stark’s personal aircraft in the recent Iron man film. For those who may not have seen it, this appears to be a recent-model Boeing 737 with a highly modified rear fuselage (vertical stabilizer replaced with a V-tail and intake for an additional engine) and drooping wingtips. I imagine that the flight scenes were digital creations (although they look quite realistic), but it appears that at least one full-scale practical version may have been made for scenes of the aircraft on the ground. Any info would be appreciated.
Well, guess that’s a ‘no idear’, then. Hah, I stumped the board!
Guess you did. Cool plane though - like what Burt Rutan would create if he was allowed to develop a commercial jetliner.
Every plane should have a stripper pole.
I took my 12 year old son to see Iron Man. When the scene with the stripper pole came on I got a little nervous. When my virginal, pristine son whispered to me, “Hey, where did the stripper pole come from?” I got a lot nervous.
I guess it’s time for the birds and the bees talk with him.
The automatically extending stripper pole!
A very cool plane.
Good idea. I know you’ve been wondering about a lot of stuff, like certain changes in your body that maybe you find a little confusing, or even embarassing, and maybe now you’re old enough to understand it, he can explain it to you.
A google search ‘Iron Man Aircraft’ came up with a forum where a couple of people spoke about it and said that it was CGI in flight, and a mock-up on the ground, that it is not a real aircraft.
I have one of those.
Actually, this is what a commercial jet developed by Mr. Rutan looks like.
When I saw the down-pointing winglets I was pretty sure it was a fake/mock-up/CGI. Winglets point UP, not down, on higher speed aircraft. You only see down-pointers on STOL aircraft, with that one clearly was not intended to be.
On edit: D’OH! It’s a turboprop, not a jet. Nevermind…
While we are talking about aircraft and Iron Man, is the the altitude record really set by a plane called the Blackbird or was that an X-Men reference? I would assume it was real, but I wasn’t sure.
Yeah, they showed a little CGI SR-71 in the HUD.
Although…if you look at the DVD extras for X2, among the “signage and labels” gallery, some of the signs onboard the X-Jet indicate that some systems were built by Stark Enterprises (or Industries. I forget which), and should only be accessed for maintainence by company technicians. Nice touch.
As for the Iron Man plane…if I had to guess, it’d be that they based the mockup on an actual plane (maybe a junked one?) if for no other reason than the wingboard engines. They looked pretty conventional, and somewhat incogruous, stylistically. I’d think that if you were building it from scratch, you’d want to play around with the design to make it look a little more futuristic—have them be semi-recessed, or with square or oval nacelles, or something.
'Just have to wait for the DVD, I guess. 
I sure liked the stripper/stewardesses, but thought the plane looked ungainly aft. YMMV.
I saw the graphic, but even looking at the wikipedia link (thanks, AndrewL), the real Blackbird looks very much like the fictional X-Plane.
I think it is much cooler that it was the real one and I learned something, because now I know. And I hear knowing is half the battle!
I do love how all of Marvel films are kind of linking up in a semi-shared universe.