Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
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- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish32 minutes
They want a jet that works. It’s not NASA’s SR-71, the SR-71 was made by Lockheed.
F35s are chronically grounded with software issues. They want a plane that works.
- 2 hours
The reason they got rid of surveillance jets is that satellites can do it without any risk to a pilot and on a 24 hr basis.
- AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish24 minutes
During the Cold War, it had to overfly Russian airspace to be able to see far enough. They were within their rights to shoot at unauthorized aircraft in their airspace.
However, it could see a lot higher percentage of Iran without overflying, and Iran can’t legally shoot at something in international airspace
- stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish57 minutes
Who cares why - this plane is so fucking awesome it’s an end unto itself.
- rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish1 hour
Nasa’s plan: “Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible.”
- Bluedragon012@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
I was worried at first, why do they need that right now? But looking over the specs, this would be like taking a classic corvette to a bank robbery. So this is for sure for show and possibly to add more sensors to record data they couldn’t previously record. Me thinks they want to make another that could maybe go to space proper and deploy something.
This is pure speculation, I’m not an expert.
- AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish22 minutes
To speculate further, the stated reason for attacking Iran was nuclear weapon development. Perhaps there are sensors to track that, that can’t operate from satellite
- Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish2 hours
Whenever nasa’s involved it’s always something to do with airflow dynamics or something. If it was the US military I would assume that though.
- AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish27 minutes
We know that NASA is doing research on both supersonic and hypersonic airflow. There are extremely few existing aircraft they could use for hypersonic testing
- 2 hours
Should be a bargain finding parts for it. The people who built and worked on it are probably all retired or dead.
- melsaskca@lemmy.caEnglish5 hours
They fired all the people who knew how to build shit and now they are desperately sending a bunch of newbies to “reverse engineer” the plane and try to figure out how it works. /s
- 5 hours
Most of the people who knew how to build that plane are dead to be fair
- 2 hours
I mean, it’s not that old of an airframe. I’m only middle aged and I saw the last time it flew in 1991. My dad just retired from the FAA a couple years ago and when he was in the military he maintained the flight suits for the SR71 and U2 programs.
The original engineers may have passed, but the crew and engineers responsible for the huge amount of maintenance for the airframe are still around and probably have more functional knowledge about the airframe than the designers.
Edit: 1999 not 1991.
- HelloDingo@slrpnk.netEnglish1 hour
Seconding this; my dad worked on the U2 for 30-odd years and he’s still kicking!
- kunaltyagi@programming.devEnglish2 hours
Manufacturing and design knowledge is mostly lost and rediscovered every few decades by the US. On one project or the other
- sparkyshocks@lemmy.zipEnglish2 hours
Based on their work on the X-59, I wonder if they just want to collect sensor data on its sonic boom characteristics, and feed that into a model for sonic booms.
They don’t need to be able to build something in order to be able to learn something from that thing in operation.
- CetaceanNeeded@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
They would be pretty retired but this probably isn’t that far off…
- Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 hours
I like the idea that one becomes more and more retired each year after they stop working.
- 4 hours
Given the US diet and healthcare system, I’d say many are definitely 6ft under
- 4 hours
So Space Cowboys 2, except
- Everybody passes the physicals just fine, but all decide to quit instead of going through the onboarding process
- The young punk bad guys in the movie are secretly trying to get an LLM to redesign it, but can’t because the Blackbird was a skunkworks program and some key principal either never got written down or DOGE cut the funding to restore the microfiche with the details so all the details got destroyed
- logan_hero@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish4 hours
So Fogbank? With only difference being all fogbank engineers dying of old age rather than management incompetence.
- cardboardboxfort@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
Yeah but what everyone forgets is that knowledge can be relearned if you do it right.
And the issue of Fogbank was eventually solved by having modern day scientist study the problem (it was something like contamination of boron being used to make the fogbank material.)
The SR71 could be manufactured today if we wanted to. It wasn’t built with some magical spells that are forever lost to history. There are more people alive now that know how to machine titanium than there were when they built them originally. Its just a matter of investment in the labor and tooling to make them again, which probably isn’t worth it which is why they’ll keep flying the remaining planes.
One of the worse internet “I’m smart” thoughts is that “we’ve lost the ability to make insert outdated item because all that talent is dead.” Ok, so retrain new talent like every generation has to do anyways and maybe next time don’t pinch pennies and shutdown the factory with all these gods of manufacturing, instead bring in apprentices and have them learn from these masters.
But what about the profit margins and the shareholders?!?!? PE firms can’t milk successful companies to death for $$$$ if they actually invest in talent.
- AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
It’s fun speculation to assume this is for military reasons but remember nasa s a civilian agency. Perhaps it’s connected to their research on supersonic and hypersonic flights
- anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
They did it back in the 90s to do some research. Probably the same now.
We can’t really build stuff like that anymore. The people who designed it had an intuitive grasp for aeronautics. You can’t teach intuition to a computer.
- 3 hours
I mean it flew in operations up until 1990 and its last actual flight was in 1999.
We can’t really build stuff like that anymore. The people who designed it had an intuitive grasp for aeronautics. You can’t teach intuition to a computer.
I mean that’s just a silly claim, the HTV-2 drone has literally gone mach 20, which is nearly 10 times faster than the SR71. Plus the SR72 project is currently in development with aims to be nearly twice as fast as the SR71.
- cardboardboxfort@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
Yes, we can build such stuff these days. There is no shortage of engineers in the USA, there is a shortage of employers willing to pay well.
There is no shortage of experienced machinist, in fact we have far more advanced manufacturing capabilities than we did in the 1950’s. We just have a smaller industrial footprint than we did in the 1950’s but there are plenty of companies that can machine titanium (in fact there are more machinist nowadays that know how to machine titanium because its more common than it was in the 1950’s.)
The shortage is in investors willing to invest in talented labor and the tooling to make the aircraft. The idea that we “lost” these skills is a general misunderstanding of how things work and reddit-tier click-bait “i’m smart” type headlines.
Yes, we can build a lunar lander even thought all the guys who built the original are dead. It would be a better lander than the originals. Yes, we can build rocket engines as good or better than the F1’s on the Saturn V. In fact SpaceX developed engine technology that far surpasses the F1’s for their boosters and just because they didn’t make 5 gigantic ones (opting for 33 smaller units) doesn’t mean they aren’t a better platform. The Saturn V couldn’t land it’s booster to be reused later on.
- lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
It’s probably some senile whim from Dear Leader. Remember when he told the navy what kind of catapult they should use?
- isekaihero@ani.socialEnglish2 hours
The blackbird is a spy plane. It’s not something they can launch a payload from, not can it do anything space related. All it does is go super fast and snap pictures. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this because the only thing NASA might want it for is to surveil UFO’s. There are all sorts of stories of energy orbs and weird stuff being seen and then helicopters showing up later, after they’ve vanished.
