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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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Well, what does NASA do?
I think it's a pretty safe bet that NASA wants it to test something about aerodynamics at extremely high speeds. Perhaps they want it to deploy some experiment at mach 3. Sometimes you just don't know if your simulation models are correct, and you need to try something in the real world.
I suppose it's also possible they want it to get some close up footage of a rocket during launch or reentry.
But I think the most likely answer is still that they just need something that goes very fast.
The thing is sounding rockets do exactly that and are still in service (vs somehow unfucking an ancient plane that hasn't been serviced in decades with tooling that no longer exists) and there are multiple companies out there operating supersonic drones for high speed tests of whatever you wanna do.
I dont see the value in bringing the blackbird back into service. I think its more likely that they want to freshen up the paint and park it at some press conference / event.
Well, you can control your airspeed and attitude in an airplane, solid rockets just make a ballistic arch and they only accelerate, they can't maintain a speed.
So if you want to test how air behaves in a particular regime, you can't actually maintain that regime with a sounding rocket, so the best you can get is a snapshot.
Honestly, if what they're working on is dialing-in their computer models, the more precise data they can get, the better. It makes sense to maintain a speed for a minute, so you can get a really good running average on your measurements of air pressure, heating, drag, etc. They may want to conduct the same tests at different altitudes and airspeeds, and probably all in level flight. To control all those factors, that's near impossible to do with a rocket.
Again, I don't know what they're doing, what their actual plans are. I'm just saying there are absolutely plausible reasons to use this aircraft.