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I have always contended that if something is the last in existence, it shouldn't be in the air.
For me, this is a "What were they thinking?" moment. To take a very rare and irreplaceable aircraft and give it one or several flights to demonstrate the quality of an expensive restoration and be able to add "flyable" to your advertising is one thing, but this airplane was flown for two decades.
What happened was more-or-less inevitable: fly a 50+ year old experimental design long enough and sooner or later something will go wrong. This airplane did not have any vertical stabilizing or control surfaces, which means there is less chance of recovery when any one of God-knows-how-many-things-might-go-wrong goes wrong.
There already was an inflight fire in 2006, which should have been a good time to say 'we have stretched our luck enough...' Not only was the aircraft being put at risk, but of course there was the pilot as well.
I think the Planes of Fame Museum has failed us. There are other more recent and still vintage flying wings that could have been flown in the N9M's stead (the Mitchell U-2 Superwing comes to mind), with a reminder to the airshow audience that a NORTHRUP FLYING WING is at the museum for all to see. Now it's not.