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

327 points · 403 comments · ilamont

  1. walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
    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&#x27;t seen the RQ180: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?client=firefox-b-d&amp;q=RQ180+greece" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?client=firefox-b-d&amp;q=RQ180+gre...

    edit 2 (apologies for the X link): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MechDesignxyz&#x2F;status&#x2F;2041281689838584193" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MechDesignxyz&#x2F;status&#x2F;2041281689838584193

    1. stickfigure · · focus · HN ↗
      &gt; I&#x27;d be more astonished if there isn&#x27;t something superior to the SR71

      Makes me wonder if this whole operation is just public cover for something like that.

      1. tclancy · · focus · HN ↗
        The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith. If they’re truly trying to relight these things, my heart goes out in advance to the neighborhood in the Southwest that burns down before they rethink it.
        1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith.

          If you set partisan politics aside for 90 seconds, you might realize that regardless of the administration publicly in charge, the government is always doing stuff behind closed doors that your brain could not even begin to comprehend how they pull it off.

          Stories like this hilariously implausible &quot;grizzled old man casually leaks secret program to Aviation Week&quot; is like throwing a cat a ball of yarn.

          1. Tanjreeve · · focus · HN ↗
            &gt;If you set partisan politics aside for 90 seconds

            About the people who gutted every major agency and meddled constantly making forces less effective in the name of the most partisan of partisan politics? Most people won&#x27;t and that is a completely self-created problem.

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