Aviation Week reports that NASA offered jobs this summer to several retired SR-71 engineers, including Mike Relja and Tim Conners, for a project to return Tail No. 844 to flight.

NASA hasn't confirmed the effort exists.

Why 844? It was the last SR-71A built and the last Blackbird to fly, in October 1999. It also has the late-model digital flight and inlet control system that nearly eliminated the SR-71's violent engine "unstarts."

They have the plane, but the hard part is NASA would effectively have to reconstruct portions of an entire support ecosystem that disappeared with the Blackbird program.