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. bunderbunder · 1790803292 · focus · HN ↗

      I would be willing to wager that the US already has at least one high altitude, very fast research plane that incorporates all sorts of modern materials and technology, and therefore has no particular need for an obsolete aircraft from the 1960s that was primarily designed to solve 1950s problems.

      1. ahazred8ta · 1790878916 · focus · HN ↗

         At several points in time, the Pentagon proposed mothballing the SR-71 and relying on sat-recon. And each time, the aircraft-recon imagery people screamed bloody murder and insisted they needed the aircraft imagery. And then one day the Pentagon announced that they were shutting down the SR-71 ... ... and there was a thundering silence from the aircraft-recon intel people. Almost as though there was already a replacement for the SR-71 but nobody could talk about it.

         1. bunderbunder · 1790880887 · focus · HN ↗

            And then NASA kept operating it as a research platform for another decade, until they also stopped. Almost as though it had lived out its useful life for that purpose.

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