NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

I'd be more astonished if there isn't something superior to the SR71 (likely unmanned) that has been flying around at night from facilities like Groom Lake for years. Look at how long the RQ180 was flying around in semi-public and known about before it became seen in daylight by plane spotters in Greece. And a long time before that there were public relations approved photos of the Lockheed Martin Polecat.

There were a series of extremely public quotations from senior DoD officially recently about how they plan to aggressively retire the Global Hawk program (which is a mostly non stealth aircraft), reading between the lines it's because they have something much better.

edit: for those who haven't seen the RQ180: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=RQ180+gre...

edit 2 (apologies for the X link): https://x.com/MechDesignxyz/status/2041281689838584193

NASA (Specifically, hotshot NASA administrator Jared Isaacman) is fixing to kill themselves some pilots.

Trivia, SR71 backseater Colonel Robert J. Roetcisender, RIP, on the right in the image below, was the designated pilot examiner who did my private pilot checkride many many years ago. It was pretty intimidating. All he asked is that I make the flight as boring as possible.

https://www.blackbirds.net/sr71/sr-crew-photos/SR71-crews/da...

A couple of questions/observations:

1) when people say "destroyed the jigs, tools and spares in 2007" What do they actually mean? Burying things isn't destroying. Putting them in a furnace is destroying. Is it possible that both parts, and tools actually are recoverable e.g. from the seabed? The dimensional stability might be off, but to help reconstruct tools, it's not nothing. Likewise digging up something buried in its packing crate is not rocket science.

2) "that would be ludicrously expensive" doesn't mean much any more. It's not unlike "we can't make a saturn 1 any more because the tools were destroyed and it would be ludicrously expensive to make an F1 engine" -well yes, but thats not impossible, it's just unlikely and expensive. So maybe this is unlikely, expensive but ... has a unicorn sugar daddy?

3) there are craft in all sorts of places. Not just on sticks outside NASA property. I am not a historian or a federal government employee, but I wouldn't think it impossible for people to ask other agencies to let you inside the shell and remove the bits you want, or even ask for it back. The one on a stick in Balboa Park San Diego might have associated boxes of bits-and-bobs..

4) its a titanium alloy. It's temperature and corrosion resistant, noting some things (like chlorine according to the web) are bad for it. It's not made of pure chinesium or balsa wood. Interior surfaces would be in pretty good shape.

This feels like the steam catapault kerfuffle from earlier this year. Maybe I'm missing some vital reason these retired technologies must be revived, but it's not inspiring when our military doctrine is "let's go back to what worked 60 years ago"

> The Air Force and NASA destroyed a $600 million supply of spare parts for the Blackbird fleet in 2007. The move came long after it seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that an SR-71A would return to operational service.

There's also the issue of converting a tanker back so it can carry the SR-71's unique fuel again. And for that matter, making a supply of JP-7 again. No other planes today use JP-7.

"It's not my money!"

I’m with the old guy on this, too long since it last flew.

It makes no sense to me, it would be an expensive and pointless vanity project. Sounds like there is a chain of people too afraid to say no, perhaps they’re hoping to drag their heels until priorities change again.

Fun fact: the US could not produce enough titanium to manufacture them, so the CIA set up shell companies to buy some from the Soviets.

A-12 (Oxcart) pilots say that the SR-71 was the station wagon version :)

A restart so secret that everyone and their dogs know about it.

people behave like engineers grow on trees.

or processes can be restarted if they were not preserved and actively practiced.

As time goes on, Warhammer 40k will become a better and better guide to current events, apparently. Only one question: after recovering this lost standard template constructor pattern, how will the rites be learned to appease such a venerated machine spirit?

Nasa reported they're not restarting the actual plane, it would cost too much money, they're making a new one based on the SR-71

To give you an idea how ridiculous this is: to start each engine, they made a cart out of two Buick V8 engines tied together - so four V8 engines to start the plane. Those V8 engines were long since out of production, so at one point they went around the country, to every junkyard, buying up every one of those V8s they could find, so they would have spares to start planes up in different places. If an SR71 had an issue and landed at an unusual airport, they had to fly the start cart and other equipment to that airport to start the plane again. Everything about this plane is expensive and one-of-a-kind. It's a hot rod that goes to space.

Why would they do this?

> And Lockheed’s operational manuals for the SR-71A still exist—and are superb...

I appreciate this level of documentation.

The SR-71 is cool, but this article is not at all confidence inspiring on many fronts.

Guy being interviewed by a reporter about a secret project. A secret project that is trying to resurrect an antique plane that has been subject to weather and on display as a museum piece for many years.

It sounds like a clown-show staged around a cool looking plane that's older than 90+% of HN readers.

But why? Someone got a woody after seeing topgun darkstar (fair). But why.

While they're at it they should try re-flying the Valkyrie...

Cue video of the helicopter coming to get Clint Eastwood in Firefox!

Come out of retirement for one last job!

Reading the article, this does seem ill-advised.

Wtf is with that sites do not track!?!! It’s hidden behind an unstyled link to turn off extra trackers…

Bet Tom Cruise will be offering to allow him to use it for an upcoming movie thrilla

The new planes (F-35) were supposed to supersede interceptors like the SR-71 (that's their multirole goal). If it can't, this is an embarrassment.

It's for a new Pepsi promotion

It'd be incredible to have an SR-71 flying again, just simply __because__!