Thread

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

327 points · 403 comments · ilamont

yodon · 1790727412 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. ceejayoz · 1790727737 · focus · HN ↗
  > It sounds like a clown-show…
  Well, the President wants to redesign the Navy to look "cool" - battleships, carriers with steam catapults again and center islands. Why not the Air Force too?
  1. Waterluvian · 1790728394 · focus · HN ↗
    If you’re gonna have an Air Farce we’ll have to tariff you guys, eh?
  2. snypher · 1790729062 · focus · HN ↗
    I wish this were the case; if it were for cool points the F-117 would be back!
    justin66 · 1790729880 · focus · HN ↗
    Little known fact (but not a secret): the F-117 is still flown today, even though they were "retired" in 2008.
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZFwOGfhRZ8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZFwOGfhRZ8
    I gather they serve mostly as aggressors and test aircraft - certainly one wouldn't fly that plane into combat. They were never ruinously expensive to operate. The SR-71 on the other hand...
    walrus01 · 1790731528 · focus · HN ↗
    The F117 is in active use as a stand-in/simulator for opposing force semi-stealthy subsonic cruise missiles for radar range testing. People see them flying all the time.
2. caidan · 1790728580 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s almost certainly being done by clowns on the orders of one of the clowns in chief. Note that quote, “I would drop everything to work on that” said guy who did not in fact drop anything to work on that. Reading between the lines I can hear old Mr loaf belting out “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that!”
  1. Yossarrian22 · 1790774860 · focus · HN ↗
    The unspoken part may be “if I was 10 years younger”, I knew one of the engineers who worked on the engines he’s still alive but almost a 100, I don’t think he’s up to the challenge of this particular boondoggle
3. imglorp · 1790729031 · focus · HN ↗
  Clown show is my guess too. There's no utility for it other than rattling windows and other airshow shenanigans for bragging press releases.
  There are faster (X-43 is mach 9.6 but unmanned) and higher and stealthier ships. But unless you're going to dip into the classified catalog, a rusty SR-71 is faster than the next fastest two ships which are both MiGs.
4. eichin · 1790729442 · focus · HN ↗
  Back when the SR-71 was active, this magazine was nicknamed "Aviation Leak and Space Mythology" - them doing an article after the other rumours and Isaacman quotes reduces the credibility of the story, at least among Old Folk :-)
5. somenameforme · 1790730749 · focus · HN ↗
  There was something special about the 60s in the US. Your comment implies you might not appreciate how absurd the SR-71 was. The F-35 is our latest fighter jet. It has a top speed of 1200 mph, the SR-71 had a top speed of 2200 mph. The F-35 is capable of operating at around 50,000 ft, the SR-71 was capable of operating at 85,000 ft. The F-35 has a self fueled range of about 1350 miles, the SR-71 had a self fueled range of 2,900 miles.
  Look up aviation records and you'll find the SR-71. It even still holds the #1 spot for the fastest airflight (by a plane) ever. Basically, the SR-71 is old, but old doesn't mean antiquated. The 60s was the era that we went from knowing basically nothing about space, to putting a man on the Moon in 7 years (Kennedy gave his 'to the Moon' speech in 1962, first landing 1969), while we currently flail about trying to recreate it with a program lasting into the decades already. The SR-71 was another product of this era.
  1. fmajid · 1790731724 · focus · HN ↗
    The US also had two superlative poles of engineering excellence, Kelly Johnson's Skunkworks and Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarines. They've been since replaced by bureaucrats without an ounce of talent.
  2. driverdan · 1790732658 · focus · HN ↗
    No one questions the technical achievements of the SR-71. It doesn't make any sense to try to resurrect them though.
    somenameforme · 1790747619 · focus · HN ↗
    Why not? Losing that level of capability, and the ability to iterate upon it, seems like terribly poor strategic planning in the past - much in the same way that ending human space after landing on the Moon was also quite poor strategic planning. Reviving the SR-71, in much the same way that human spaceflight is also being revived, seems quite logical - especially because in the case of the SR-71, in contrast to rocketry, there is nothing remotely comparable in the commercial domain.
    Near the top of this thread, there's a lot of debate and discussion about what we must have 'secretly' concocted. Some think that the various sighted UFO/UAVs might be secret US tech. But I see no reason to think this is the case, in no small part because things like the decision to retire the SR-71. You don't get from A to E without going from B C and D.
    There's also other practical reasons. If we did have anything meaningfully advanced then it'd be being used, however grossly inappropriate it might be, in places like Iran. No chance the current administration holds anything back for the sake of some strategic edge in a possible future conflict. I also think secrecy in modern times is not especially realistic. Everybody has eyes in the sky, to say nothing of probable increases in human level spying and the like. And so forth. Basically the idea of rebooting the SR-71 would be precisely with the aim of eventually fulfilling these sort of 'fantasies.'
    Lumich · 1790799760 · focus · HN ↗
    If you like the SR-71, the U-2 CIA spy plane is at least as fascinating. All this was retired because of advancements in satellite technology.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
    « what we must have 'secretly' concocted » — Secrets are often dirty, which is why they're secret. Not for public consumption. Like, what is the secret behind Wikileaks Bradley Manning's “conversion” into “Chelsea” after whistleblowing secret dirty videos showing the world how dirty it really is in there? In that military? Did they castrate him in custody?
    Rather than wondering about “secret tech”, boyish fantasies fueled by Pentagon sponsored Hollywood movies glorifying guns and violence and blasting enemies (they always need enemies), ask yourself whether all of the stuff publicly and conspicuously trumpeted about (not only in past decades) did and does actually work and exist. ;)
  3. m4rtink · 1790761568 · focus · HN ↗
    F-35 can shoot stuff, unlike the SR-71.
    somenameforme · 1790781443 · focus · HN ↗
    There were armed variants like the YF-12. So far as I understand, the main reason the game changed is because missiles improved. Not much point focusing on things like speed when some missiles are reaching mach 16, contrasted against the SR-71's mach 3.3. In that context you simply have to pray your counter-measures work, and if that fails, then hope your ejection seat works.
    Tangurena2 · 1790793322 · focus · HN ↗
    Bullets are slower than the SR-71 - it would shoot itself down if it had a gun.
    bionade24 · 1790796225 · focus · HN ↗
    Newton disproved that more than a century ago.
    Lumich · 1790797535 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you mean Einstein? But it was only a “thought experiment” …
    bionade24 · 1790864822 · focus · HN ↗
    I was wrong, it was actually already Galilei: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance
    who described that a motion happens in relation to its inertial system.
    Fact is, the claim that the SR-71 would fly into its own fired bullets is absolutely ludicrous.
    Lumich · 1790881053 · focus · HN ↗
    « claim … ludicrous » — Without knowing much about physics, I totally agree.
6. pbk111 · 1790731866 · focus · HN ↗
  The guy interviewed is actually the gentleman that was in charge of destroying all the spare parts at the end of the SR-71 program So he knows what he is talking about and is well known. Old interview here: <a href="https://youtu.be/mQse_XLxcWM?is=JASvQNI_bVn_bAr7" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/mQse_XLxcWM?is=JASvQNI_bVn_bAr7
  The remaining members of the quickly dwindling Blackbird community ( maintainers and flight crews) are very skeptical that it can be done but it does not mean that Isaacman is not trying.
7. dboreham · 1790731911 · focus · HN ↗
  The story is almost certainly a leak. The amateur hour reporting can be ignored.
8. Animats · 1790747698 · focus · HN ↗
  What's so surprising is that this is supposedly using an SR-71 that was on outdoor display. The Museum of Flight in Seattle has one in much better condition.[1] It's on loan from the USAF, so the USAF could take it back if they needed it. There's another one at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, and a third at the Smithsonian's annex in Chantilly, VA. All three of those have been stored indoors in good conditions, and were flown to their current location under their own power. Not abandoned outdoors on a pylon.
  This sounds too much like a politically motivated decision.
  If the US needed a hard to shoot down recon aircraft, converting a cruise missile to carry a recon package would probably be quicker. There's also the X-37B, the unmanned mini space shuttle the USAF has. The USAF launches one once in a while. It stays up for a year or so, and then comes back down and lands. There have been about eight flights. Seems to work fine. Once it was put into an orbit that grazed the atmosphere and went back out, to test if could do high-altitude recon if desired. It looks a lot like the original Space Shuttle, but it's much smaller, about the size of a small aircraft.
  [1] <a href="https://www.museumofflight.org/Exhibits-and-Events/Exhibits/blackbird" rel="nofollow">https://www.museumofflight.org/Exhibits-and-Events/Exhibits/...
  1. dboreham · 1790777408 · focus · HN ↗
    I think this one was on its wheels. But presumably the key factor is that it was owned by NASA, which makes it I assume much easier for NASA to do...whatever with it.
    mrpippy · 1790786976 · focus · HN ↗
    The article says this one was on a pylon (with a spare engine on display on the ground below). Being owned by NASA is important, also being on a military base (the home of USAF test flight!) where it could be removed and easily wheeled into a large-enough hangar without anyone noticing for 5+ months.
    Getting any of those planes outside of their museums would be logistically difficult, and of course it would immediately be noticed. And even if you can rent a hangar big enough, and secure it, then you're stuck at BFI/IAD/Wright-Patterson trying to do this impossible task.
9. pwg · 1790779199 · focus · HN ↗
  Another comment in this thread pointed out that "return an SR-71 to operational flying" is /also/ the exact type of cover story that would be handed out for as cover for an actual project (likely some hyper-sonic aircraft) when trying to rehire retired engineers for this new secret project.

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