this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
558 points (97.4% liked)

Technology

88390 readers
2989 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I'd love to know what NASA has planned for it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (3 children)

My guess would be as a platform for leo satelite attack. Yes it is unarmed, but that could be changed.

[–] LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That would probably be better suited for a U2 since they have a higher service ceiling.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Satelites move fast, might speed be a factor?

[–] LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Im just going to use my intuition to address the first half of that train of thought, cause it's a good question. But knowing what I have learned about the SR-71, speed could also be the reason you wouldn't want munitions on the airframe. At max speed, heat becomes a real issue. That's why the SR-71 is black and earned the Blackbird moniker. Black readiates heat more efficiently, allowing more heat generated by friction to be radiated away from the plane. Adding any sort of munition to the airframe would increase friction exponentially at supersonic speeds. So not only do you deal with extra drag, but more heat is generated as well. If you move it into the frame itself, you need to redesign the whole plane and reduce fuel storage. I'm not even sure any munitions could tolerate the force of deployment at the supersonic speeds that the SR-71 would be flying at.

The other half that i think is the more fundamental reason why this claerly isn't a testbed for some LEO satellite hunter of some sort, is that satellites move at incredible speeds. A satellite in LEO is traveling about 17,000 mph while the Blackbird's max speed is around 2,200 mph. Low Earth orbit is ~400km while the cruising altitude of the SR-71 is ~24km. So the weapon would need a range of at least 375km. We'll just give it a 500km range. The SR-71 would stay within the 500km range for 1:41 and a U2 at the same altitude at max speed would be in range for 1:29. Just 12 seconds longer. Seems pretty negligible to me, but I work in healthcare, not militaristic weapons development and deployment so 🤷🏼

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Fair and well reasoned enough. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

That sounds like a pretty damn good guess to me