Thread

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

327 points · 403 comments · ilamont

scrumper · 1790779923 · focus · HN ↗
The general tone here seems to be against the effort, but separate the circus from the ringmaster and there is a lot to like here.
Having a manned, very high altitude, very fast research plane is undoubtedly useful for all sorts of development purposes.
But more than that, we are as a civilization doing a bad job of preserving cutting edge expertise from the past. We keep letting entire areas of engineering and technology die out without really trying to preserve them even though we know at some point they will come in useful. The skills, processes, even institutional confidence developed in just trying to get an SR-71 flying again will teach us a lot about resurrecting other such dead ends. Aerospace in particular is full of them. That will, for sure, get us out of trouble or speed up something we need at some unknown point in the future. I'd think of it more as developing a general capability than the world's most expensive vintage aircraft hobby.
1. runjake · 1790780542 · focus · HN ↗
  Look, I'm certified as the world's biggest SR-71 fan. As a kid, I saw it fly a number of times, got to see it up close, and had a family member who worked as an engineer on the program. I believe it may have even been this Blackbird, 844. It impacted me so much that I later went on to work on my own black and other military aircraft.
  I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia. My hope is that if they're going to resurrect the Blackbird, they'll at least retrofit modern engines into the thing.
  But there are much more modern, cost-effective ways to build very-high-altitude, very-fast aircraft. I'm doubtful that going manned is the right approach. It takes a lot of weight and space to carry a person and the required life support systems. That capacity could be better utilized for more fuel and sensors.
  There's better technology that's far cheaper to maintain and operate. And you could potentially get hypersonic, or at least near-hypersonic, performance.
  1. pc86 · 1790783872 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia.
    Why would you assume that?
    lazide · 1790784253 · focus · HN ↗
    Have you heard about the ‘new’ battleship plans? [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump-class_battleship" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump-class_battleship]
    It would be shocking if it wasn’t what was happening - resurrecting the SR71 makes no sense, just like resurrecting the idea of a battleship. Tech has far eclipsed their usefulness.
    It’s the military budget being prioritized based on boomer nostalgia, not any actual plausible fit to reality.
    jandrewrogers · 1790793940 · focus · HN ↗
    The naval terminology reflects a displacement class and use case, not a specific design.
    The now-cancelled DDG(X) next-generation destroyer already had a larger displacement than a heavy cruiser. And it was cancelled for not being large enough to support its mission load-out as a modern destroyer.
    The name “battleship” may be archaic but the displacement requirements for the next-generation destroyers (or whatever they are eventually called) are roughly in “light battleship” territory.
    To put it another way, we were calling battleship-class ships “destroyers” for historical continuity reasons. Over time, ships in a class have become much larger but we kept the old names. Even the older Arleigh-Burke destroyers would be traditionally classified as heavy cruisers if they were commanded by a flag officer.
    LorenPechtel · 1790799492 · focus · HN ↗
    "Battleship" is based around big guns. What he wishes he had in his pants. In a modern situation there's simply no use case for a big gun. How do you propose to get within range?
    On one side we have a battleship. $2B in current dollars for a WWII ship.
    On the other side we have 10% of that value in harpoonskis.
    The battleship never reaches gun range.
    Naval gunfire has use against targets not worthy of a missile. But anything you're going to be shooting it at doesn't have armor to speak of.
    lazide · 1790801715 · focus · HN ↗
    Don’t forget thick armor. A battleship with no guns and no armor is literally no battleship at all, hah.
    Amezarak · 1790944010 · focus · HN ↗
    OK, but the proposed battleship is what the GP described: a souped-up Arleigh Burke with hundreds of missile launchers, which are described as the primary battery.
    The guns are described as secondary and, other than the proposed single railgun, are basically the same as a cruiser.

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