NASA appears to be pulling its SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest production plane ever made, out of retirement as the Trump administration teases its new line of hypersonic surveillance jets — but doubt…
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
I can think of a couple of reasons to use the SR-71 again.
Concern that a crash in space could lead to a cascade of crashes, disabling all sattellites.
(On demand) capacity. I could imagine that the SR-71 can cover an unplanned spot faster than sattellites. Also, with the wars in Ukraine and Iran they’re maybe finding out that they don’t have enough imaging capacity.
The imaging angle, a plane can image almost horizontally, they can look under bridges, through windows etc.
A ten times increased resolution could be useful for recognizing details, maybe it’s even good enough to recognize people though it might be pushing the limits of facial recognition. It’s also the kind of resolution where they can read some text, e.g. identifyers on shipping containers or military vehicles.
You need to deliver the drones to the location of interest though. And regularly bring fresh ones I guess.
A stealthy and fast as fuck delivery platform would make sense.
Imagining an SR-71 crewmember now opening a little hatch and awkwardly shoving little drones out, to see them instantly torn apart in the winds at the slowest speed it can go, 850 km/h.
I can think of a couple of reasons to use the SR-71 again.
Can’t they do all that with drones?
You need to deliver the drones to the location of interest though. And regularly bring fresh ones I guess. A stealthy and fast as fuck delivery platform would make sense.
I don’t think the SR-71 has much cargo space if that’s what you’re suggesting.
Imagining an SR-71 crewmember now opening a little hatch and awkwardly shoving little drones out, to see them instantly torn apart in the winds at the slowest speed it can go, 850 km/h.