> I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia.
Came here to say this is exactly my guess.
FWIW I think it's almost always a good idea to keep at least one example of any plane flying, just out of simple cultural principle (I feel this way about the Avro Vulcan and I think it's really sad that none can do more than taxi anymore) so I am not sure it's stupid for them to ask, but I can see why keeping an SR-71 in any kind of functional condition might be implausible.
I would guess this is not a serious project to get it flying, but more a recognition that it will take more than two years to do it, could be cancelled at the two year mark without really wasting vast amounts of money, and ensures some very easy, regularly replenishable goodwill from the man who thinks the USA has planes that are literally invisible.
There is precedent, after all: his insistence on a return to steam launchers on carriers.
I like the idea of keeping an example of everything flying from the perspective of my inner child, but it would be such a colossal waste of resources in reality.
This plane had its own special blend of fuel, meaning it had its own special tankers too since it needed to refuel immediately after takeoff, and custom rubber blends for the tires.
So we would need to have a refinery that can make the fuel, a tire manufacturer to make the rubber and tires, and a tanker program to fuel the thing.
All this for a plane that is incredibly dangerous to fly (37% of them were destroyed in crashes, none due to enemy action), and that adds no capability.
Yeah. This one just does not seem plausible, and the reasons why are as you say.
I'd be really surprised if this was not Trump-nostalgia-driven, and in that sense it deserves a bit of cynicism.
However, it doesn't seem particularly wasteful to have people in a room whose job is to see how far that could go in principle, even if the real value in that project is that it would keep historical technology decisions about that plane in people's active working knowledge, passing institutional and personal recollections down to a custodian etc.
The past is prologue, really — and not all history is nostalgia. Sometimes things that weren't practical because of cost become practical, but are almost forgotten; exercises like this are possibly worth doing for almost every legacy project when the original team are nearing the end of their lives.
Came here to say this is exactly my guess.
FWIW I think it's almost always a good idea to keep at least one example of any plane flying, just out of simple cultural principle (I feel this way about the Avro Vulcan and I think it's really sad that none can do more than taxi anymore) so I am not sure it's stupid for them to ask, but I can see why keeping an SR-71 in any kind of functional condition might be implausible.
I would guess this is not a serious project to get it flying, but more a recognition that it will take more than two years to do it, could be cancelled at the two year mark without really wasting vast amounts of money, and ensures some very easy, regularly replenishable goodwill from the man who thinks the USA has planes that are literally invisible.
There is precedent, after all: his insistence on a return to steam launchers on carriers.