this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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They fired all the people who knew how to build shit and now they are desperately sending a bunch of newbies to "reverse engineer" the plane and try to figure out how it works. /s
Most of the people who knew how to build that plane are dead to be fair
I mean, it's not that old of an airframe. I'm only middle aged and I saw the last time it flew in 1991. My dad just retired from the FAA a couple years ago and when he was in the military he maintained the flight suits for the SR71 and U2 programs.
The original engineers may have passed, but the crew and engineers responsible for the huge amount of maintenance for the airframe are still around and probably have more functional knowledge about the airframe than the designers.
Edit: 1999 not 1991.
Manufacturing and design knowledge is mostly lost and rediscovered every few decades by the US. On one project or the other
Seconding this; my dad worked on the U2 for 30-odd years and he's still kicking!
Oh nice, were you guys stationed out at Beale AFB?
Sorry, I'm terrible about seeing my notifications. Yep, we were at Beale between 94 & 98, but overseas before and after that.
No worries, same here. We were there from 96-00, there's a good chance we've run into each other before! There's an even better chance that our fathers worked together in some capacity, it was a relatively tiny base and the U2 program was pretty small.
I think Beale was one of my favorite bases I've ever lived on, I used to go hiking in the foot hills basically everyday during summer. I feel like it was small and remote enough where you could get into a lot of shit as a kid without ever really getting in any trouble.
By chance did you guys ever go to one of the Christmas parties in the old skunk works building?
Not me personally, we lived off-base and I was only about 12 when we left-- but my folks probably did for sure!
Funnily enough, I've been helping them clean out their kitchen so they can have it redone and the sheer volume of old squadron/hangar dance/etc mugs they have absolutely beggars belief. I'd bet there's one or two in the hoard that corresponds to one of the dances you're thinking of.
Nice, I think I was in my early teens when we left as well. I'm sure my dad has a box of old photos in it somewhere, but his last few years of service kinda soured any fond memories he had left of his time in the Air Force. Though I think that's kinda common place for senior NCO, I haven't met too many dudes above Master Sargent who I could claim were jolly guys.
Only a few more years before the mesothelioma takes the last of the maintenance crew, that thing was genuinely filled nose to tail (proverbially, it was actually full of fuel) with asbestos
Claude, reverse enginer plane, make no mistake.
They would be pretty retired but this probably isn't that far off...
I like the idea that one becomes more and more retired each year after they stop working.
So Space Cowboys 2, except
EDIT: Spelling.
Given the US diet and healthcare system, I'd say many are definitely 6ft under
So Fogbank? With only difference being all fogbank engineers dying of old age rather than management incompetence.
Yeah but what everyone forgets is that knowledge can be relearned if you do it right.
And the issue of Fogbank was eventually solved by having modern day scientist study the problem (it was something like contamination of boron being used to make the fogbank material.)
The SR71 could be manufactured today if we wanted to. It wasn't built with some magical spells that are forever lost to history. There are more people alive now that know how to machine titanium than there were when they built them originally. Its just a matter of investment in the labor and tooling to make them again, which probably isn't worth it which is why they'll keep flying the remaining planes.
One of the worse internet "I'm smart" thoughts is that "we've lost the ability to make insert outdated item because all that talent is dead." Ok, so retrain new talent like every generation has to do anyways and maybe next time don't pinch pennies and shutdown the factory with all these gods of manufacturing, instead bring in apprentices and have them learn from these masters.
But what about the profit margins and the shareholders?!?!? PE firms can't milk successful companies to death for $$$$ if they actually invest in talent.
Absolutely, and although they did re-invent Fogbank, it took almost 100 millions, makes me wonder what would it cost to keep the knowledge from disappearing in the first place
Nothing about producing nuclear weapons, let alone miniaturized thermo-nuclear devices optimized to get the most efficient reaction during detonation is cheap. And the knowledge wasn't necessarily lost, that is impossible to determine since we're dealing with highly classified secrets regarding the construction of a nuclear weapon.
It's possible that while making fogbank they merely got a contaminated batch of boron. Let's say, for example, you find your grandma's recipe for apple pie. But when your mother tastes it she says it's a little off. You then eventually realize that you used apples that weren't ripe yet, or that grandma used apples that were beginning to get soft. Thats not really the same as "lost knowledge" it's more an experience gap.
Clickbait always makes these things sound like we've lost this information and now we're screwed because it can never be relearned and no one knows anything oh no doom and gloom. Truth is lots of knowledge, through-out history, has been "lost" and then "rediscovered" primarily because this info becomes less valued/important and eventually someone needs it again so they rediscover it. Happened alot with mathematical theories and concepts, like calculus.
No one wants to lose knowledge but no one wants to pay to keep it alive the proper way (master/apprentice system that ensures these tricks of the trade are continually passed on) so we favor a system where specialized experts (scientists) are called in to solve these issues and rediscover the tricks of the trade using the scientific process. Either way you pay for the knowledge but we wanted to save money and shutter a bunch of cold-war era defense companies when the cold-war ended. The consequences of that are when you want to resume making nuclear weapons of the quality America demands you have to hire those scientists to figure out all the pesky details like fogbank.
Makes sense. Also agree on the last part
Based on their work on the X-59, I wonder if they just want to collect sensor data on its sonic boom characteristics, and feed that into a model for sonic booms.
They don't need to be able to build something in order to be able to learn something from that thing in operation.