NASA Wants To Resurrect The SR-71 Blackbird

Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman fueled speculation about the agency’s high-speed flight research plans by unveiling a mysterious aircraft silhouette on a slide titled “Rebuilding our X-plane portfolio.”

Asked whether the image on the slide depicted the famed SR-71 Blackbird, Isaacman denied it was a Blackbird but signaled renewed ambitions for high-altitude, high-speed flight, saying NASA was getting back into the business of “flying high and fast again.”

This brings us to an Aviation Week report saying NASA is working to return a Blackbird to flight after nearly three decades in retirement.

The agency has approached retired Blackbird engineers about restoring Tail No. 844, a 59-year-old aircraft removed earlier this year from an outdoor display at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.

The aircraft was moved into a former Space Shuttle hangar, where crews have been working on it, former NASA and Air Force test engineer Mike Relja revealed to the aviation news website.

However, as the outlet shared, there is one major problem:

The Air Force and NASA destroyed a $600 million supply of spare parts for the Blackbird fleet in 2007. The move came long after it seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that an SR-71A would return to operational service.

That decision could lead to significant restart costs. In addition to all of the consumable spares that must be in regular supply, NASA would need to restore access to the Blackbird’s unique JP-7 fuel blend, the triethylborane ignition chemical, engine oil and hydraulic fluids, Relja adds. A hodgepodge of bespoke ground equipment also no longer exists, leaving the current effort without vital, if unheralded, pieces of equipment.

“To raise the wing, you need a cart,” he says. “To get the engine out, you need a cart. You need equipment to pull the [engine] spikes, pull the [ejection] seat. All that stuff is gone.”

When Relja raised all of these issues with Ash, the NASA manager assured him it would not be a problem, without going into details about their solutions.

“Every time I threw one of these things out there, he says, ‘Oh, engineering will take care of that [and] engineering will take care of that,'” Relja recalls.

At the same time, he does not dismiss a return to flight as impossible, especially if NASA has enough resources to make it achievable.

“If you got a ton of money, maybe you can make it happen,” he says. “They went to the Moon, you know.”

Why NASA wants to restore the SR-71 to flightworthy status remains unclear. Reports over the years have pointed to Lockheed Martin’s development of the SR-72, dubbed the “Son of Blackbird,” for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Yet no flight tests have been publicly confirmed.