Thread

1. ggm · 1790747290 · focus · HN ↗

   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.

   1. djriley · 1790752910 · focus · HN ↗

      As far as number one goes, the tooling has almost certainly been recycled when they say "destroyed". By recycled I mean in to new steel in an electric arc furnace. It's pretty common even in every day mass production for tooling to either be sent for destructive testing or a destructive decomissioning/EOL use (cutting, defacing, used for practice for facility apprenticeship, etc). I imagine something on the level of Blackbird tooling would have gone through a very strict decomissioning process before it even hit the scrap bin.

      As far as #2 and the rest goes, I agree that with enough money you could make anything happen. However, sometimes recreating something so complex could be a "not enough money in the world" type situation. Sure, drawings and specs exist, but even on today's 3-d modelled assembly you're not typically modelling every single part to full accuracy. You have things that are off the shelf that might be a black box drop in, you have things you contract out that are built to spec. You know what you get, but not necessarily exactly how it's done. Then in your own facility there is a certain level of institutional knowledge that is not necessarily documented in such a way you can just recreate it.

      Finally, one of the biggest hurdles, there's are not things that you can just throw an LLM and some engineers at. The actual trades themselves have changed so much since the time of production your only option is to call in retirees. The machinery is different now and so are the workers.

      I feel like with a large budget they could definitely get an SR-71 in the air for testing and exhibition purposes, Id love to see it happen. I guess it really depends on how much was removed and destroyed when the machine was decomissioned and how much damage lack of maintenance, environmental factors and age have taken their toll. The good news is it hasn't been operated in a long long time. The bad news is it hasn't been operated in a long long time.

      Source: I am a toolroom machinist at a material science lab in the aerospace and defense sector.

      1. bluGill · 1790772957 · focus · HN ↗

         Large production runs (think cars) the tooling is sold to a third party to make spare parts. However that third party will watch what sells and scrape the tooling when sales are not large enough to justify keeping it around. Things that never break have the tooling scrapped early. Things that collectors break the tooling stays around - if it wears out they make replacement tooling.

         The SR-71 was not made in large enough numbers to get the above treatment. If the government wants spare parts they need to pay to keep that tooling around.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.