Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
I love the blackbird / a-12 / yf-12 family. They’re truly the pinnacle of pre-computerized engineering in many ways. Most of the design was completed before 1960 - a mach 3 aircraft, made with slide rules and deeeeep institutional knowledge. People joked that Kelly Johnson could see air, he was so good at designing aircraft and anticipating problems.
that said: why bring it back?
it’s gotta be a successor - I don’t know if we could bring the airframes back to operational status, and the fuel situation is wacky. does anyone even make jp7 anymore? panther piss?
and even if you could bring it back to operational status, and supply the specialized tankers (most tankers fuel from a common supply they run off of, but the jp7 carrying tankers for the sr-71 have a separate tank just for the blackbird) and train everyone up, the blackbird is visible from hundreds of miles away on modern radar. It was stealthier than most of it’s peers but never a stealth aircraft like the f117.
This all tells me: it’s gotta be a new toy.
In the words of the nasa director themselves during the keynote speech “Are you sure that the silhouette we showed was an SR-71?”
I wonder what would happen if you painted a blackbird with Vantablack paint?
If it flew at night would you be able to see it?
Would it stand out as darker than the darkness?
Vantablack is quite fragile and would quickly disintegrate at high speeds
Put a clear protective coat on it
The NY Post is a diseased maga rag and should never be used as a source.
Do you know how hard it is to find a concise article about this that isn’t paywalled?
is archive.ph an option for paywall problems?
How can it be the fastest plane if it’s not even painted red?
It’s really really really really really dark red
The first one was red but once they got everything right, they would just make photocopies every time a new one was needed. And as we all know, red ink comes out black in copies.
My friend has the red one in his garage. They let him have it because he saved Obama’s life once.
They could have made it even faster with a coat of red paint, but engineers thought that would have pushed the materials past their limit, so they chose to leave it black.
It’s painted with the intention of redness.
supersonic missles might have something to do with it
OK - so, Trump thinks they are cool and wants them back in action despite having better technology already in place. This tracks because of his dumb Trump-class battleship in development, which will be closed down soon after being commissioned because it’s a dumb idea.
It’s sad that that is the most likely explanation. No grand strategic vision, no plan, just being nostalgic for the eighties.
sixties
iirc they still were flying in the 80s
It’s like the entire US government is running a Make a Wish foundation scheme for Trump.
Let’s hope you’re right. Because of the implication.
The man tweets everything that comes into his head. If Trump came up with this, he’d have told everyone.
Don’t you guys see it: If really crazy stuff happens and satellites are taken out of the sky, youre going to see to do some old-school reconnaissance.
If that was the reason, wouldn’t it be the USAF and not NASA pulling them out of retirement?
It’s just trump living in the past we have drones now even if satellites were taken out
boomer nostalgia is a disease, and it isn’t more complicated than that
lawl as long as you got your hate in, which isn’t an addiction, btw, all good
I understand that you think recognizing the impact of boomer culture on our society is ‘hate’, but also maybe you’re just mad.
I don’t hate the boomers, not anymore.
That doesn’t mean that boomer nostalgia isn’t a disease.
Obviously this is counterintelligence. They are, in fact, pushing the world’s fastest plane. That’s why it goes so fast, actually. The occult science these NASA dogs do thorns, y’know?
They can make it to space, so…
“If you got a ton of money, maybe you can make it happen,” he told Aviation Week. “They went to the Moon, you know.”
That is SO funny.
NASA is researching quieter supersonic flight, and I can’t help but think of how the (also Lockheed Martin) X-59-
-has a extreme wing profile/nose, not unlike SR-71:
8700 lbs max doesn’t seem like a lot, are they counting on the parabola for most of the acceleration I wonder?
I think the most likely explanation is something like this, they want data they can’t otherwise get.
Machine learning + fluid dynamics?
Turbulence at the trans-sonic barrier is one of the most difficult and poorly understood problems in modeling even today - Heisenberg famously said he’d ask god two questions: why relativity, and why turbulence? - and as a result experimental results really are the best way of determining even the base parameters of the behavior of a system under those conditions.
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I mean if it’s the fastest, why would it really be retired? It’d be like Michael Phelps retiring after his first gold medal.
They are expensive to fly and maintain and their primary purpose as a high-altitude spy plane has been taken over by satellites.
They are still really cool, we just don’t have a good use for them.
I’d give them $3.50 for a Joyride.
You know as many times as I’ve read the copypasta it never gets old, and the chance to feel that push against your seat as you get to then past the sound barrier sounds like the coolest fucking job
