Thread

1. 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. jmyeet · 1790799347 · focus · HN ↗

      The SR-71A was a reconnaissance or spy plane that flew at high altitude where it avoid anti-air weapons of the era by flying at high altitude and at Mach ~3.

      We simply don't need that capability anymore. Recon of this sort is now done by satellites (at much higher resolution) and it's unclear if designated enemy states don't have or couldn't have an effective defensive system.

      Now you cold have a program to develop hypersonic airframes and engines (eg scramjets) but it's way more likely that this kind of technology will be applied to cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles and so on.

      Some things we don't need to maintain just to maintain them.

      1. scrumper · 1790854098 · focus · HN ↗

         > Some things we don't need to maintain just to maintain them.

         The point of my note was less about SR-71 and more about developing the capability to resurrect old technology in general, a skill we do not often practice at institutional scale. The SR-71 is a visible and cool way for NASA and contractors to teach themselves how to do something we'll probably have to do again in future. Making a documentary series out of it would be a smart move too, if we are attempting to inspire the future of American engineering by fetishizing the past as seems to be this administration's intent.

         Then:

         > We simply don't need that capability anymore. Recon of this sort is now done by satellites (at much higher resolution) and it's unclear if designated enemy states don't have or couldn't have an effective defensive system.

         Isn't really true. The A12/SR-71's predecessor, the U2, is still flown operationally today because satellites are only a 90% solution. They can't be tasked to overfly a particular site on demand or on an arbitrary schedule, can't have their sensors switched out on demand, and can't loiter. The air defense evasion aspects of the Blackbird aren't as important now which is why the U2, being much cheaper to operate, is still flown and the SR-71 isn't. Of course that is not an argument to spend billions returning Blackbird to flight, since we already have the U2. But high altitude reconnaissance aircraft are still useful.

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