posted in Technology
NASA mysteriously trying to pull world’s fastest plane, SR-71 Blackbird, out of retirement — and won’t say why
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
nypost.com/2026/09/29/us-news/us-quietly-sr-71-blackbird-out-of-retirement-and-wont-say-why/
Replying to @Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
I like its lines, but realistically, I don’t know what you’d use it for unless you need extremely high-resolution images.
We know, from Trump’s probably-ill-advised tweet back in 2019, that we can do 10-centimeter resolution from reconaissance satellites like USA-224, near the physical limitations of light resolution.
Perigee altitude: 270 kilometers (170 mi)[1]
Apogee altitude: 986 kilometers (613 mi)[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
During missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes (Mach 3.2 at 85,000 ft or 26,000 m)
The SR-71 operates at a tenth to a thirtieth USA-224’s altitude, so assuming comparable imaging systems (which I could believe) and that there aren’t stability or thermal issues (which I’d be less-certain of) it can get ten to thirty times the resolution of a KH11 satellite from the lower altitude. I’m not sure how much utility there is in reconnaissance to getting 1 cm or ⅓ cm resolution images instead of 10 cm.
en.wikipedia.orgUSA-224 - WikipediaReplying to @tal@lemmy.today
Satellites are too predictable, plus too infrequent. If there are two spy satellites that cover Iran, for example, Iran can easily know when and what direction, then presumably take some effort to cover whatever they want to hide.
A reconnaissance plane can show up without warning, any time, loiter for at least minutes, take pictures from different angles, in addition to sharper imaging. We can speculate they may also have sharper non-optical imaging, such as thermal or radar
Replying to @AA5B@lemmy.world
Ok, but what if there are several satellites that cover iran at all times? What if they would need to hide from most directions all of the time? Because I think that’s basically the situation right now. The whole world is being monitored from multiple angles all of the time by several different governments. At that point, reconnaissance aircraft in general seem a little redundant.
I think the only real utility they offer is the ability to swap out sensors between flights and upgrade old cameras to the new cutting edge options whenever they’re available.