Originally Posted by
etudiant
Afaik, the project was already dead when the mid air happened. In an ICBM era, the bomber was too slow, even at Mach 3.
The main loss was that NASA might have been able to use the aircraft to explore the Mach 3 operating environment for a future long range SST,
Obviously, that never happened.
By that logic, we shouldn’t have nuclear capable B52, B2 and that new fangled stealth bomber being built. A bomber offers options that missiles don’t and vice versa. Orac is correct, highly capable SAMs killed the XB-70.