[HN Gopher] United Airlines will buy 15 planes from Boom Supersonic
___________________________________________________________________
United Airlines will buy 15 planes from Boom Supersonic
Author : throw0101a
Score : 544 points
Date : 2021-06-03 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| rsynnott wrote:
| Reminder that Concorde, and the largely imaginary Boeing SST, had
| hundreds of orders. Orders do not, in themselves, guarantee a
| product.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| What are the commercials terms for deals like this?
|
| I'd image United pays some portion upfront in exchange for a
| discount and being amung the first to have the plane. Boom gets
| some cash flow without dilution and validation from an airline.
|
| If United is paying a portion upfront, is there risk factored in
| if Boom can't deliver?
| nradov wrote:
| Yes the terms are usually like that. The upfront payment is
| probably fairly small and not material to United. If Boom fails
| to deliver then United will become one more unsecured creditor
| in the bankruptcy case.
| notatoad wrote:
| I don't know any specifics, but I'd guess that united's up-
| front payment is near $0, and the main benefit for boom is not
| the immediate cash flow but the ability to take united's order
| to a bank and use it to secure a loan.
| refurb wrote:
| Agreed. These types of agreements, this early, tend to be
| Letters of Intent that aren't legally binding OR a contract
| stating that "if Boom produces planes to agreed upon spec by
| 2029, United will purchase 15..." plus a bunch of out
| clauses.
| cududa wrote:
| United could've also invested in the co as part of the deal.
| notahacker wrote:
| They won't even be able to take it to a bank, but it'll
| enhance their credibility with VCs. United get a bit of PR,
| and if Boom does work out they're at the front of the queue
| and have probably influenced the design a bit by the time it
| comes to deciding whether to actually pay.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Might be an obvious question, but is there an engineering reason
| behind why they have the Avro Arrow / Concorde delta wing? Is
| that just a thing that makes physics sense for supersonic flight?
| quux wrote:
| I think it's physics, yes. If you want to keep the leading edge
| of the wing behind the supersonic shock cone you need to have a
| highly swept design and a Concorde style delta wing is a good
| choice for lots of aerodynamic and engineering reasons.
| Gelob wrote:
| Theirs no way united is sending them money for these yet. 2029
| passenger flight LOL. We'll see if united or boom are even in
| business then.
| fblp wrote:
| I think it's worth noting that united received $5 billion dollars
| in federal aid last year. I wonder if they'll pay any of it back
| or if the surplus this year is going into purchases like this?
| inpdx wrote:
| Shouldn't new plane development be shifting to ghg neutral
| solutions? This seems like it's moving in the wrong direction.
| alberth wrote:
| I've always been surprised that no major airline has vertically
| integrated into owning their own plane manufacturer (e.g. United
| to acquire Boom as a company).
|
| Is there a regulatory reason preventing this?
| pjerem wrote:
| Isn't that because airline is a low margin business ? You'd
| need a ton of cash to own your plane manufacturer.
|
| You may have hard time to sell planes to concurrent companies
| so you cannot scale like Boeing or Airbus.
|
| You would be tied to this manufacturer for life and if you
| start to manufacture defective planes, you are on the highway
| to bankrupt and selling your plane manufacturer wouldn't even
| save you because nobody wants a defective airplane
| manufacturer.
|
| Sounds like a lot of risks.
|
| But those are just my thoughts, i'm far from being an expert.
| bfstein wrote:
| Yes - United used to be owned by Boeing. The Air Mail Act
| banned common ownership of manufacturers & airlines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_Airlines
| [deleted]
| mmaunder wrote:
| Great to see so much innovation in aerospace. Boom has said
| they're going to reduce noise, but they've also said they'll only
| fly supersonic over water with buffers between supersonic zones
| and populated areas. So the 'boom', as it were, is still a
| concern.
|
| I'm super interested to see how quiet their planes are at
| subsonic. If you ever saw the Concorde flying subsonic, it was
| unbelievably loud. Nothing to do with being supersonic - their
| engines were just obnoxiously loud. Came into Cape Town a long
| time ago and made the whole town rumble on final.
|
| In this blog post: https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/booms-
| principles-of-sustaina...
|
| ..Boom says: "Today's subsonic commercial aircraft are 80% more
| fuel efficient than those of the 1960s, and noise footprints have
| shrunk up to 90% in the last 50 years. This technological
| progress has fueled Boom's efforts to design a supersonic
| airliner that makes economic sense for airlines and their
| customers. "
|
| However, the innovation that enabled this is high bypass turbofan
| engines. Turns out if you move more air slower, it's way quieter
| and more fuel efficient because physics. Boom can't take
| advantage of this - at least directly, because they have to go
| supersonic. A high bypass turbofan engine is huge, by it's very
| nature. At supersonic speeds this presents a lot of drag. That's
| why I'm super curious how they plan to be quiet and fuel
| efficient while also being supersonic.
| Multicomp wrote:
| NASA is working with Lockheed on the X-59 QueSST to tackle the
| noise concerns. Construction is ongoing but over half complete
| according to wp . first flight planned for 2022. 2025 or so is
| when the icao expects to establish a new sonic boom standard.
| If things go well it could be much less of a blunt instrument
| than 'no overland flights ever' like what was required for the
| birds in the days of Concorde and Boeing's SST competitor, the
| 2707 or Lockheed L-2000
| carabiner wrote:
| It's not just a high bypass ratio that has helped. It's
| computational acoustics (we can predict the sound something
| makes based on its geometry and movement in a medium), nacelle
| design, materials. In supersonic flight, the most pressing
| issue is suppressing the sonic boom. There was a lot of work on
| this in the late 00's, with even Cessna rumored to be working
| on a quiet supersonic business jet. Various attempts - a
| bulging, ogival nose will increase the local density raising
| the local mach number leading to a weaker shock, and other
| thing. It was a lot of fine tuning and deep insight into
| transonic phenomena.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I can assure you that the planes the take off from the
| airport located 7 km, plain line of sight makes measurable
| noise, with infra basses I guess. Not unbearable but clearly
| a nuisance. So maybe there's progress, but it'd be better
| with just less planes...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why is there suddenly a lot more drag once you break the sound
| barrier?
|
| I would imagine drag increases linearly or exponentially with
| speed - not as a step function once you cross the sound
| barrier.
|
| Or are you saying because it's going to be flying twice as
| fast?
| genericone wrote:
| I understand this is probably an honest question, so I'll
| just point to this wiki article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag-
| divergence_Mach_number#:~....
|
| [Increasing Mach Number] can cause the drag coefficient to
| rise to more than ten times its low-speed value.
|
| I only know this because of a number of fluid-dynamics
| courses that are only required for Mechanical and
| Aeronautical engineering majors. Barely anyone else is
| expected to know this information. Mach numbers represent
| fluid-flow discontinuities. If there is fluid flow in a
| varying inner-diameter tube and there is a Mach number change
| from <1 -> >1 at any point in the tube, as long as the Mach
| discontinuity is there, fluid flow characteristics before and
| after the discontinuity are decoupled from each other, they
| no longer influence each other if the Mach discontinuity is
| present.
| carabiner wrote:
| It actually IS a step function. A shock wave by definition is
| an instantaneous change in fluid properties. At the molecular
| level, the change in properties is observed as occurring
| within a mean free path length (average distance a gas
| molecule travels before colliding). Imaging that shows the
| jump: https://phys.org/news/2015-08-schlieren-images-reveal-
| supers...
| themeiguoren wrote:
| Worth noting that human sound perception is logarithmic, not
| linear. A 90% reduction in sound is -20dB, which is
| significant. But in human perception terms, that's only about a
| fifth of the range of the typical soundscape which ranges from
| the 20dB of a quiet room to the 120dB of an ambulance siren.
| voldacar wrote:
| 10db actually. 20db would be a linear scaling of 100x.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| It depends on the the physical property you're' measuring.
|
| For power ratio, 10dB is 10x; for amplitude ratio, 20dB is
| 10x.
|
| Loudness is typically measured by "sound pressure level"
| (dB SPL), which uses the latter (amplitude ratio).
|
| Also, it's worth pointing out that while sound perception
| (like almost _all_ the perceptions people have, Stevens 's
| power law [1]) is logarithmic, its exponent isn't exactly
| 10 or 100. [2] claims that every 20dB (10x) in SPL, the
| perceived loudness is 4x.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens%27s_power_law [2]
| http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm
| aeternum wrote:
| How about some powerful noise cancelling speakers around the
| turbofan?
| coopsmoss wrote:
| Turbofan noise is nothing compared to sonic boom noise.
| ehnto wrote:
| I wonder what the result would be of using pulsejets offset
| in timing by 50% of eachother.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Lots of weird mechanical resonance, and not noise
| cancellation.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think noise cancelling is only practical at the listening
| location.
| parhamn wrote:
| Wendover Productions has a great video on the latest generation
| of supersonic airplanes and their comparative advantage over
| prior attempts like the concorde.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
| aetherson wrote:
| So I was interested in how well Boom was doing in keeping to its
| timeline, and found an article from two years ago:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/supersonic-passenger...
|
| Some side-by-side comparisons:
|
| 2019 article: "Boom envisions its Overture airliner traveling at
| Mach 2.2." 2021 article: "a plane that could fly at Mach 1.7"
|
| 2019 article: "Its planes could be ready for commercial service
| in the mid-2020s". 2021 article: "It is targeting the start of
| passenger service in 2029."
|
| The 2019 article also says that Boom is constructing a 1/3rd
| scale version of Overture that could be making test flights later
| in 2019. This article from October 2020 says that the 1/3rd scale
| vehicle was "rolled out" in 2020 and could be ready for test
| flights in Q3 2021.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2020/10/26/boom-supe...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Delays happen. That is normal. I am more worried about the slip
| in speeds. "Traveling at Mach 2.2" becomes "could fly at Mach
| 1.7". That is a radical loss of performance. It is more than
| just 0.5. It is a switch from traveling at a speed to "could
| fly", a theoretical top speed for the same aircraft. I think
| they are facing solid engineering challenges and are having to
| reduce expectations.
|
| FYI, most airliners already fly at or above 0.85 Mach. 1.7 is
| faster than 0.85 but operationally it will only be only an
| incremental decrease in total travel time.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| The sweet spot for civil supersonics from an aircraft design
| standpoint is less than Mach 2. You can maintain good
| propulsion system performance without variable geometry
| inlets, boom strengths are lower, aeroheating loads are
| lower, fuel burn is lower, etc. Operating expenses will be
| significantly lower for such an aircraft. Maybe Boom is
| finally realizing the importance of all this as well.
|
| Whether that's enough travel time reduction to make these
| aircraft worthwhile is definitely a valid question. The low-
| boom technology that NASA is pursuing is for sub-Mach 2
| aircraft (I don't believe Boom is pursuing a low-boom design,
| but I haven't followed closely as I don't consider them a
| credible organization either).
| dannyw wrote:
| A halving in speed sound amazing!
| SamBam wrote:
| Even if we say doubling instead of halving, I assume that
| the total portion of a transatlantic flight that it could
| travel at top speed would be pretty small, so the total
| time might still be more than half.
| nopzor wrote:
| other than lower speeds during approach and departure
| around controlled airspace with speed restrictions, the
| overwhelming majority of a transatlantic flight will be
| at full speed.
|
| of course, there are exceptions with congestion, hold
| patterns, excessive vectoring, etc, but this is generally
| true.
|
| another thing to keep in mind is headwinds/jetstream.
| when going west across the atlantic; they can often be
| 100+mph. so the delta between boom and eg. a 787 becomes
| even more pronounced in this situation.
| ginko wrote:
| It's not like the 787 can't also make use of the
| jetstream.
| twic wrote:
| A _halving_ in _speed_ would be surprising, at least.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 2019 article: "Its planes could be ready for commercial
| service in the mid-2020s"
|
| This one is the most egregious. It's hard to imagine a good-
| faith scenario where the company actually thought they would
| ship a commercial airplane in a couple years when they didn't
| even have their scale model working.
| sjwalter wrote:
| Mid 2020s, not mid-2020. That is, 2025ish, not 2020.5ish.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even then. It took Boeing, a company with vast amounts of
| experience developing airplanes, close to ten years to
| create the 787. And that is a bog standard subsonic
| airliner design with the most notable feature being the
| composite construction.
|
| Boom seems like vaporware.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| To be fair, the 787 isn't bog standard. It's built from
| composites, which change a lot of dynamics in the plane.
| Similarly, there were a lot of avionics updates from the
| previous generations. It looks standard, but there were a
| lot of improvements to the plane that required a lot of
| work.
| iab wrote:
| I take your point here, but bristle a little bit on the
| "bog-standard", given the truly amazing engineering that
| goes into modern airliners
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree, airliners are marvels of modern engineering. I
| am grateful that we can be flippant and call them bog-
| standard because we have (collectively) become so good at
| making them.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It took Boeing, a company with vast amounts of
| experience developing airplanes, close to ten years to
| create the 787.
|
| This is a bit like saying SpaceX's Starship isn't
| possible because Boeing's SLS is costly and delayed. "If
| Boeing can't do it, it must be tough" is no longer the
| same statement it would've been in the 1960s.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Airbus, if you would like an alternative comparison,
| kicked off development of the A350 in 2005 and the maiden
| flight was in 2013, eight years later.
|
| Boom hasn't even finished the scale prototype they've
| been promising for a while, much less started development
| on an actual full size plane. If they ever fly the plane,
| it will be more than a decade from now.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Boeing has a special sort of ineptitude when it comes to
| execution. Other companies don't suffer the same
| problems.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Alright, let's use Airbus as an example, then. The A350
| (seems to be their most recent airliner) had its maiden
| flight in 2013, after being in development for 8 years,
| since 2005.
| dingaling wrote:
| The A350XWB was launched in December 2006
| hedora wrote:
| It took Boeing 3 years to design and start mass
| production of the 747 (1965-1968):
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
|
| The 747 is a descendant of the 707, which took 3 years.
|
| It's based on the 367-80 prototype which took less than 2
| years (they only built one 367-80).
|
| The 787 isn't really representative of a reasonable
| timeframe for an experienced company to design + build an
| airliner.
| notahacker wrote:
| We don't live in the 1960s and tolerate 1960s accident
| rates any more. The 787 is much more representative of a
| reasonable timeframe for an experienced company to design
| and build a new airliner than anything that happened in
| the 1960s when there were minimal regulations and no
| competition.
| nopzor wrote:
| the difference is not just the regulations and risk
| tolerance.
|
| it's also a regression in skills, culture,
| accountability, and urgency.
| ebruchez wrote:
| > mid-2020s > in a couple years
|
| This means around 2025.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Well, in 2019 the pandemic hadn't given a big blow to the
| aviation industry so that slower start could be blamed on that.
| Not a good time asking for investment into a high-risk
| expensive niche product meant for a market that's in deep
| crisis.
|
| Not the speed thing though :) But the faster you go the more
| energy it costs for the same distance so that would make sense.
| DevKoala wrote:
| I also had tons of plans for 2020 but then a global pandemic
| happened.
| thesausageking wrote:
| The market rewards bold predictions. In 2016, Elon Musk said
| customers would be able from LA to NYC with no human
| intervention by the end of 2017. He's now the richest person on
| Earth.
| samstave wrote:
| Additionally - what is the project timeline impact for any
| major endeavor such as this with respect to supply and labor
| chain interruptions due to pandemic, Suez-tipation, other
| economic factors...
|
| I recall reading that major construction, mfrg project
| timelines were automatically setback by a large number of
| months due to the Evergreen thing... (JIT construction required
| a precise delivery of components and even a few week hiccup in
| that caused a downstream of ++months)
|
| OBV Boom isnt affected by such - but the labor version locally
| in the US (Colorado) could still have slowed...
|
| The other non-tangible impact of something like this is the
| loss of intellectual momentum that a team may have had
| aggressively going after a timeline when suddenly all the eng
| team gets to go spend more time with family...
|
| Just some factors to be considered.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| This is amazing progress for a company that needs to get type
| certified by the FAA before it can fly anything.
|
| The FAA requirements are soooooo painful, and often illogical
| and sometimes even mutually contradictory.
| nradov wrote:
| Which specific FAA requirements are illogical or mutually
| contradictory?
| jcims wrote:
| It's probably a function of human nature to be conservative
| there.
|
| It seems that the FAA is trying to optimize for the fewest
| unknown unknowns, and until the 737 MAX it would be hard to
| argue that entirely new airframes, propulsion and control
| systems operating in flight regimes that have only been done
| one other time (intentionally anyway) in commercial aviation
| would achieve that objective better than incremental changes.
|
| The associated bureaucracy bloat can be a feature because
| it's harder to sustain a ruse over time.
|
| That said, it really does impede development of arguably
| safer systems.
| grkvlt wrote:
| > flight regimes that have only been done one other time
| (intentionally anyway) in commercial aviation
|
| TIL the Tu-144 was designed, built and then operated
| commercially entirely by accident...
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Well, in this way at least, they are quite like Elon Musk's
| startups.
| barnabee wrote:
| It makes sense to always communicate the best case, not the
| most likely expected case. If you allow worse-than-best-case to
| become the plan/expectation, you'll fill the time and often
| exceed it.
|
| As an engineer, this feels strange, because you might expect to
| be trying to be as close to correct as possible when you give a
| date. But that's not the goal. The goal is to create a
| narrative and sense of purpose that gets you there as quickly
| as possible.
|
| Finishing something 6 months behind schedule in 18 months is
| still better than doing it "only" 1 month behind schedule in 19
| months. Of course, you also need a risk analysis of the worst
| case, and to understand the financials and be able to survive a
| reasonable range of potential delays.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Gotta say you're completely ignoring the negative toll this
| takes on morale. I _hate_ unrealistic timelines, and I 've
| been on almost every side of the table (engineer, engineering
| manager, product manager, program manager, even CEO for a
| tiny startup). Internally, only the most junior engineers
| tend to believe the timelines for these ambitious R&D
| projects. And it leads to senior engineers just getting tired
| of endless politicking around hype instead of actually
| focusing on building the thing and being honest about when it
| will be ready. To be a little less professional - the
| timelines are usually fucking bullshit.
|
| I've quit before because of this very reason. You're allowed
| to disagree with me obviously, but I don't want to work with
| you if you honestly believe this is a good policy.
| hedora wrote:
| There's also the effect where engineer A says "two years"
| and has a solid plan to hit that date, but engineer B says
| "6 months" without actually having a plan.
|
| In my experience, engineer B usually gets to take charge of
| the project, and inevitably takes 3-4 years before the
| project ends, having failed to deliver anything that works.
|
| Bonus points if the project is then declared a success by
| the pointy haired boss that bet on engineer B.
| qayxc wrote:
| That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-
| optimistic specs and timelines.
|
| After reality kicks in and unforeseen issues arise (remember
| 2020? me neither), plans need to be adjusted.
|
| The scale model was initially expected to fly in 2018 even [1].
|
| I expect further delays to be realistic as well. They either
| going to deliver sometime in the next decade or go
| bankrupt/sold out within the next couple of years.
|
| [1] https://blog.wandr.me/2017/11/false-hope-boom-supersonic-
| tra...
| jandrese wrote:
| To be fair most people were calling even that scale model
| test timeline hopelessly optimistic. That they didn't deliver
| on their impossible timetable is not a huge surprise.
|
| That said, a lot of people also expected them to fold by now
| and were definitely not expecting a fairly major order from a
| large airline.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Didn't a competitor just go bist despite having 29 jets in
| the order book?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >(remember 2020? me neither)
|
| I'm firmly in the camp of when people ask how old we are, we
| get to --actualAge (as long as you birthday is after lock
| downs). It's like the old drinking adage, if you can't
| remember it, it didn't happen.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-
| optimistic specs and timelines.
|
| No, this isn't normal at all. Some optimism is expected but
| promising commercial operation a couple years out when they
| weren't even close to anything like it is simply lying.
|
| We shouldn't be giving companies a pass for this stuff
| theptip wrote:
| 2020 was not normal for the travel industry. Would not be
| surprising if they went into hibernation, and/or all of
| their order book was paused while covid uncertainty
| persisted.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Boom supersonic isn't travel industry. It's silicon
| valley engineering.
| theptip wrote:
| The title of TFA is "United Airlines will buy 15 planes
| from Boom Supersonic". I would describe United Airlines
| as in the travel industry.
| ghaff wrote:
| No it's actual real engineering. They're located in
| Denver.
| projectileboy wrote:
| I agree that it is wrong to give companies a pass on this
| behavior, but, with respect, this is in fact pretty normal
| in the aviation industry. In fact, given the ambitions of
| Boom, I'd argue they're doing quite a bit better than any
| of us might have expected.
| oivey wrote:
| "Could be ready" falls pretty short of making a promise.
| I'm not sure what giving them a pass really entails. If
| they're late to market it costs them money. Are you going
| to boycott using their product if it is good but late?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > No, this isn't normal at all.
|
| When you want to sell, you should be overly optimistic in
| your presentation.
|
| When you have sold, you can now explain the real picture
| and explain that actually... everything will take 3 times
| longer than when you were trying to sell.
| tohmasu wrote:
| You have inadvertently highlighted how thin the line is
| between (some) business and fraud.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is it fraud if they actually deliver a product, but
| late? Wouldn't fraud be never delivering a product after
| taking money for it? Granted, the IF in the first
| sentence is still looming over them.
|
| I hate super positve PR propaganda too, and a skeptical
| eye should always be applied. Fraud is still used when
| talking about Tesla, yet they clearly have developed
| products. Yes deadlines were missed. I'm willing to give
| Boom a bit of leeway.
| jorams wrote:
| Delivery time is a feature of the product you are
| selling.
|
| Say I'm looking for a bike. Person A is selling one I
| like and promises to deliver after two weeks. Person B is
| selling one I like a bit less, but promises to deliver
| after one week. I might now choose to buy from person B,
| even if I like the bike a bit less.
|
| If I buy from person B and they deliver after three
| weeks, there's a problem. Why did it take three times as
| long? Did they ever intend to deliver after one week?
| Should they have known they wouldn't be able deliver
| after one week? They got the order based on a feature
| they didn't deliver. If that was intentional, that's
| fraud.
| cglace wrote:
| What do you propose "we" do?
| qayxc wrote:
| > No, this isn't normal at all.
|
| Hm. Significant delays and missed timelines aren't normal
| you say? Let's see (aerospace only):
|
| * all SpaceX projects so far (USA)
|
| * Virgin Galactic's space tourism plans (USA)
|
| * Boeing's 787 and 777X (USA)
|
| * HAL's Sukhoi-30-, Jaguar Darin III-, and Tejas LCA
| projects and production (India)
|
| * BAE Systems Plc/TAI TF-X project (UK/Turkey)
|
| * EADS's MRH-90, Tiger, and A400M (EU)
|
| * Airbus A380 (EU)
|
| * Comac's C919 project (China)
|
| * ...
|
| TBH, it'd be easier to list projects that actually finished
| on schedule and didn't face significant delays, such as the
| Airbus A350XWB.
|
| And most of the companies listed aren't even money-starved
| start-ups that required investor attention and media hype.
| It's almost as if developing, testing, and certifying
| cutting edge aerospace projects is kind of hard and just as
| easy to predict and schedule as large software projects...
| iab wrote:
| Interesting comment about the XWB. The hype-driving is
| obviously necessary - nothing is ever more than ~5 years
| away, because that is the limit of VC/consumer patience.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Worked out quite well for Theranos didn't it?
| iab wrote:
| The exemplar of the wrong mix of engineering and hubris
| oivey wrote:
| Theranos was magic tech that they managed to never have
| to prove worked. We've been building supersonic jets for
| a very long time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. There's zero question that a 50 passenger
| supersonic commercial jet can be built. The questions are
| things like timeline, cost, and specs.
| simplicio wrote:
| Theranos isn't really the same thing though, they didn't
| pretend that they were on the verge of a breakthrough,
| they said they had already had the breakthrough and the
| tech was working and deployed. That's less "hype" and
| more just straight up "fraud".
|
| Boom Supersonic is obviously overly optimistic in their
| deadlines, but they at least aren't pretending that
| they're meeting them when they aren't.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, if you are so stupid that you basically require
| people to lie to you, you will be lied to.
|
| It's amazing that there are so many people willing to lie
| in order to make honestly good ideas viable, instead of
| everybody just being like Theranos.
| chx wrote:
| Bombardier C-Series, anyone?
|
| It was authorized by the board in 2005, first flight was
| planned for 2008, entry into service was planned in 2010.
| First flight was 2013, it entered in service in 2018
| (January, but still).
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Also the SLS and the JSF...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > * Boeing's 787 and 777X (USA)
|
| Don't forget the KC-46 tanker. Even though they had a
| working KC-767 to start from.
| mshumi wrote:
| Unfortunately, aerospace isn't an industry where you can
| say "fuck it, ship it"
| dylan604 wrote:
| 737Max disagrees with that sentiment.
| leoc wrote:
| Talk about the exception that proves the rule, though!
| dylan604 wrote:
| 300+ deaths seems like a very tough lesson to learn to
| prove the rule, though. Sorry, you comment struck me as
| rather macabre. This isn't a software update that caused
| people a temporary bit of inconvenience.
| leoc wrote:
| TBH I'm not sure what you think I was saying.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Aviation has very high visibility of fatal crashes but a
| low overall rate. The car fatality rate is much higher
| but we treat it as routine because they are lower
| severity events at much higher frequency.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That was the point of the person you replied to. You're
| in agreement.
| lumost wrote:
| The optimistic timeline may have been based on "if we get
| the money and customers we expect, and they don't have any
| special requirements". When the above isn't true you're
| likely to see a slower rollout. The company is projecting
| the optimistic form of their current plan to attract
| investors/customers who will help make that timeline a
| reality.
| agumonkey wrote:
| should we buy BOOM stock ? :)
| the8472 wrote:
| If they take too long they might have to compete with
| suborbital rocket flights.
| Opt_Out_Fed_IRS wrote:
| Doesn't management and C-suite executives lose the respect of
| technical people in the company when they do media
| appearences and sign off this sort of overtly-optimistic PR
| pieces?
| landemva wrote:
| United Airlines press release for woke jetsetters: carbon
| neutral, carbon capture, soybean oil fuel.
| shakezula wrote:
| In my experience, it's usually the C suite who's pushing
| these type of overly-optimistic PR pieces.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Which means they find some senior technical person to
| actually be part of the announcement, to give it more
| credibility. They're reading off a C-suite script, yes,
| but they are putting their names to it.
| shakezula wrote:
| For sure, but it also means that they aren't getting to
| add their own part to the script either, which is
| probably a lengthy and detailed "yes, but..."
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah it's not surprising. I'm kinda disappointed since I'd be
| excited about faster flights to Europe and Asia, and I would
| pay for it
|
| Since they're telling me it's 2029, what I really hear is
| 2030 or 2035, or never. So that means I'll probably be stuck
| on the same slow flights for more than a decade :-( It
| doesn't feel like this is a space where there is a lot of
| competition.
| burlesona wrote:
| You're correct that there isn't a lot of competition.
| njarboe wrote:
| SpaceX's Starship could be.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Starship isn't going to compete with aerial flight nor is
| it even trying to...
| chromaton wrote:
| SpaceX has said otherwise:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/nyc-to-shanghai-
| in-40-minute...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Will it compete in the air taxi market as well?
| ksec wrote:
| >That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-
| optimistic specs and timelines.
|
| It is only in US and Silicon Valley that it is called _Super
| Optimistic_. Many parts of the world look at the difference
| in projected TimeLine from 2020 to 2029 ( A difference of
| _9X_ ) and we call that BS or flat out lying.
| andromeduck wrote:
| mid-2020s should probably be read as more ~2025 +/- 1
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _mid-2020s should probably be read as more ~2025 + /-
| 1_
|
| Estimating mid-2020s on a start-up's new platform and
| landing it in 2028 is a massive win and far from B.S.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| Meanwhile, USAF just fully designed and tested a 6th
| generation fighter [1] in record time [during 2020]:
|
| https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-
| us-...
|
| They say the key to the record time was an 'all virtual'
| prototype design and test process. I found that pretty
| fascinating.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth-generation_fighter
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I'm very hesitant to take anything "DefenseNews" says at
| face value.
|
| Obviously heavily pro-military just by the title, as if the
| military is only used in a defensive manner.
| nradov wrote:
| Building a flying airframe is relatively easy now. The slow
| expensive work tends to be in weight reduction, software
| development, and systems integration. But hopefully the Air
| Force has learned something from the problems in the B-2,
| F-22, and F-35 programs.
| InvisibleCities wrote:
| Well that's good. How's the F-35 coming along?
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Apparently quite well if you look past the decade-old
| takes on it.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's the point that of the grandparent post - timelines
| have slipped a lot.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| With modern combat aircraft the easy part is the working
| airframe actually. The YF-22 first flew in 1989 and finally
| entered service as the F-22 in 2005. F-35 had a similarly
| long development time and while its technically been
| operational for years, its software is like a modern EA
| release. A lot of the good stuff missing and available as
| later DLC. They are still patching in drivers for weapons
| that legacy aircraft already support.
|
| While its definitely good that NGAD has produced a flying
| prototype so quickly, it isn't proof that they have
| achieved the goal of faster development.
|
| The primary hinderance has been and still is the software.
| The defense industry has been slow to adopt modern coding
| practices. Sometimes that's a good thing. But on the
| balance its bad. F-35's software development has all of the
| hallmarks of a project saddled with a great deal of
| technical debt combined with outdated practices and
| overburdened with compliance.
| javajosh wrote:
| The F-35 has in-app purchases? Nice.
| NateEag wrote:
| "It looks like you're gonna crash! Pick up a parachute
| for just 200 coins and you won't have to start a new
| pilot file."
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| You have 12 seconds until crash. Please enter credit card
| information.
| Someone wrote:
| > With modern combat aircraft the easy part is the
| working airframe actually.
|
| Is there such a thing as a " _working_ airframe" for
| modern combat aircraft? Reading
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability, I have
| the understanding that, for modern combat aircraft, you
| can't consider the airframe to be separate from the
| software.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Flight control software is a tiny fraction of the
| software on a combat aircraft.
|
| As a side note: Early relaxed stability planes had no
| software. It was implemented with analog computers
| jupp0r wrote:
| What makes you think that Boom won't have a long time to
| go fixing their software after they have a flying
| prototype?
| nradov wrote:
| Boom production models will use COTS avionics just like
| every other business jet manufacturer. They'll have to
| write custom flight control software but that will be
| much easier than on a military aircraft. No weapons, no
| external stores, no defensive systems, no tactical data
| link, no complex navigation modes, etc.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Except they'll need to write that flight control software
| themselves, for a plane so different from modern aircraft
| that there are literally no experts in software design
| for this class of aircraft. (Outside of anyone doing it
| for the military, and I can't imagine they'd be allowed
| to repurpose that work.) There will need to be a whole
| lot of new software development, along with the
| corresponding review process by the FAA. Simpler than a
| complex military fighter, but there's no COTS solution
| for the software and that's a huge part of this project.
| hadlock wrote:
| Looking at the current state of open source software like
| ardupilot, and the fact that we've had supersonic jet
| fighters since the 1950s (F-100 Super Sabre) I don't
| think the control software is going to be a major
| bottleneck. If anything, not being tied to legacy control
| software may improve their velocity and testing.
| Navigation solutions should be drop in. Garmin, etc offer
| drop-in glass cockpit retrofit solutions for Cesnas from
| the 1960s.
| akiselev wrote:
| Stuff in civilian aviation is designed to be certified
| before its flown commercially, stuff in military aviation
| is designed to be adapted on an evolving battlefield.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Dassault did something similar like 10 years ago with one
| of their business jets. In that case, it was also to
| showcase the capabilities of Catia.
|
| Still amazes me, on the one hand you have the Air Forces
| one-year project. On the other hand you have the German Air
| Force that needs more than that just ginish the first draft
| of the requirements document for an existing plane.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Don't rule out the design/development of other planes in
| US arsenal. The F-35 is just in the news here this week
| (yeserday maybe) about it being a meh plane because of
| the bureaucratic process. The Air Force project seems to
| be an outlier and definitely not the norm.
| MaxDPS wrote:
| That's true, though given this success, hopefully they
| can name it the norm going forward.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I'd love that as well, but research projects are very
| very very different from actual huge contracts.
| Especially with how politically engineered supply chain
| has to be in USA. And changing that isn't technical
| challenge - it's political one, and no one will dare to
| do it.
| [deleted]
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I agree. Not only did they digitally prototype the fighter,
| but also its entire manufacturing process. That's something
| new AFAIK.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sounds like a step that Tesla skipped. In the VFX world
| of movies, this is known as PreViz. I remember when the
| 3D rendering first came to CAD. One of the projects my
| dad was working on discovered that if they built it
| exactly to the plan's specifications, there would have
| been plumbing pipes running through other pipes. Lots of
| value in these kinds of looking at things digitaly before
| doing it physically
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Sure, but how many people USAF has and how many billions
| did it cost? Compare that to Boom. Also, USAF does not have
| to comply with civil aviation regulations.
| nradov wrote:
| Military aircraft don't have to go through the FAA
| certification process but the actual requirements are
| generally even more rigorous. So that doesn't save
| anything. Most of the work is typically done by the
| manufacturer's employees.
| xkjkls wrote:
| > That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-
| optimistic specs and timelines.
|
| No, they don't. I don't know how much Elon Musk has tricked
| people into thinking it is normal for companies to be
| perpetually late, but it is definitely not normal.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Is their tech any better than what the concorde had 50 years ago?
| dr_ wrote:
| If this works out, we can probably envision a future for travel
| where there are different price points for different travel
| times. Traveling to the other side of the world? Cheapest ticket
| is your traditional 18-22+ hr flight. Next is your 9+ hr flight.
| Most expensive is the 1hr trip via a rocket ship.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Arguably we are already there - direct flights for $X, one-
| stops via Dubai on Emirates for $X * 0.75, two-stops via Manila
| and a city in China on China Southern for $X * 0.50.
| mc32 wrote:
| Wonder if the big plane MFGs will be interested in buying them
| out or believe they have the talent to bring to market if the
| market proves large enough.
| lormayna wrote:
| It's just a matter of cost for customer: how much a ticket for
| supersonic flight is going to cost? If the price is comparable
| with a "normal" business class, I will fly with that one: you
| have lot of more space to relax and 3/4 hours more are not an
| issue when you can sleep comfortably.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| I think to start with, it's a matter of cost for the expense
| account.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Supposedly around $5000 for a transatlantic flight, compared to
| $20000 on the Concorde when adjusted for inflation.
|
| https://www.flightglobal.com/business-aviation/dubai-boom-to...
| bin_bash wrote:
| They claim "$100" eventually which screams vaporware to me.
| https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/boom-supersonic-four-hour...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Yeah, that's insane. This must be a stock-market summer pump
| hype-fest.
| Anasigns wrote:
| The world's first purchase agreement for net-zero carbon
| supersonic aircraft marks a significant step toward our mission
| to create a more accessible world.
| NohatCoder wrote:
| Am I the only one to suspect that this "order" is mostly a show
| deal? United Airlines will do anything to seem progressive, and
| Boom needs some credibility in order to raise more funding.
| antipaul wrote:
| How exactly is it net zero emissions?
| shawn-butler wrote:
| https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/q-a-with-booms-sustainabilit...
|
| A lot of fluff but I would guess a good place to start to learn
| more
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Amazing how the only piece of tangible information in that
| post was how Boom promises to adhere to standards and
| regulation when it comes to noise levels.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Fuel from carbon-capture or biofuels. Looks like something they
| intend to do in the future, not necessarily the first
| prototype. More details here :
| https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/booms-principles-of-sustaina...
| realreality wrote:
| We've known for a long time that biofuels are an
| unsustainable scam.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703574604574500.
| ..
| hannob wrote:
| Lots of marketing and gullible fanboys of course.
| gumby wrote:
| They claim the new Rolls Royce engines will run on biofuel.
|
| It's left as an exercise for the reader to figure out how to
| make biofuels net zero.
| isis777 wrote:
| Use 1x fossil fuels to create 1.1x biofuels. Sell biofuels to
| companies wanting to pander to their woke audience. look how
| great we are!!
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I suspect that the "net" qualifier is doing a lot of important
| work in that statement. Maybe they are planting a gazillion
| trees, do carbon capture or regrow coral reefs. Could mean
| anything really. Plant enough trees and you'll theoretically
| have "net zero emissions" from lighting a lake of crude on
| fire.
| afavour wrote:
| Problems with supersonic (?):
|
| - Noise means you can't do US domestic
|
| - Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
|
| - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
|
| - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one
| for one route
|
| Which ones has Boom solved?
|
| https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1400425028022308874
| rtkwe wrote:
| The Concorde actually had a pretty profitable final couple
| months when they cut prices down from ultra premium because it
| massively increased their utilization. Boom also seems to have
| plans for Pacific routes according to their website, so I
| assume they're planning their range accordingly.
| paulpan wrote:
| Good point, higher utilization is one of Southwest's key
| competitive advantages since they're able to squeeze 1 extra
| trip for their aircraft than competitors.
|
| Significantly cutting travel time should also enable higher
| utilization. E.g. cutting LA-Sydney route in half (15hrs to
| 7hrs) theoretically enables fitting in a roundtrip in the
| timespan of a one-way.
| bob33212 wrote:
| They create a PR boost for United. They can tell the business
| travelers that "Super Diamond Elite" business travelers will
| get first access to these flights (Dates TBD). Making those
| people more likely to go with United over Delta.
| athenot wrote:
| > Noise means you can't do US domestic
|
| Part of that was also political. It's petty and I wish it
| weren't true, but a _domestic-made_ plane making noise will be
| better accepted than a _foreign-made_ plane making noise.
| notahacker wrote:
| Whilst this is true historically, the regulations exist and I
| don't see rewriting them to tolerate sonic booms as a vote
| winner, not even for those committed to arguing against the
| trend towards stricter restrictions on greenhouse gases etc.
| A lot more people will live near the flightpaths than use
| them
| henrikeh wrote:
| Do you have any sources to back that up? U.S. Congress funded
| development of the SST (Supersonic Transport) back in the
| 60'ies but stopped funding in 1971 due to concerns and
| displeasure of exactly the sonic booms (and ozone layer
| issues). So five years before the Concorde entered service a
| domestic plane was not seen as being worth.
|
| Heppenheimer's The Space Shuttle Decision has a chapter where
| this is discussed in detail.
| neom wrote:
| These three (albeit somewhat long) videos answer a lot of the
| questions you asked:
|
| Flight of the New Concordes -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZLykryZLFk
|
| Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might
| Work) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
|
| Supersonic Flight - What Does The Future Hold? -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3K04wgf_ZQ
| mshook wrote:
| You could add: - Concorde didn't work flying east because with
| the time zone thing, you might be flying real fast, you still
| arrive super late. Meaning you could as well pay less and fly
| the red eye...
| bberenberg wrote:
| I fly SF->NYC redeye regularly. The practical side of takeoff
| and landing is that I get 4 hours of sleep max. I also start
| to sleep around 2AM NYC time. If I could reduce flight time
| to 2.5 hours, I would rather land in NYC at 2AM and get to
| bed there so I can start my day much better rested.
| mshook wrote:
| But do you fly in first class? Because for cheaper than
| Concorde, that's what you could get (and that's what
| Concorde was competing against) and usually in first, they
| don't wake you up for breakfast or whatever before you
| land...
|
| And the other issue in your case is flying supersonic over
| land but I hear you.
| michaelt wrote:
| First class is all very well, but you don't escape the
| unfamiliar bed; the noise of the engines and other
| passengers; the weird air pressure; the fact you're in
| your travel clothes; the strangely corporate environment;
| or the jostling and noise of landing and takeoff.
|
| Of course, some people are less sensitive to these things
| than others - and jobs with a lot of travel probably
| select for people who find the experience of flying
| tolerable.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Yes I do and they absolutely do wake you up before you
| land. It's an FAA requirement that the seat be upright.
| nopzor wrote:
| it might be an FAA requirement to be upright, but iirc
| some other international airlines (eg. virgin atlantic,
| air new zealand) allow you to keep your biz class seat in
| seating position during takeoff and landing.
| ghaff wrote:
| At some point, I decided I'm too old for redeyes unless I
| really have no choice. Yes, it means getting up early to
| get in at a reasonable time but at least I sleep in a real
| bed.
| vidarh wrote:
| I've flown London to Washington DC for meetings and then
| immediately returned to the airport to fly back, and I'd have
| _loved_ to have had the ability to fly supersonic for trips
| like that.
|
| So while "just" flying East might be less attractive, very
| brief return flights will be attractive even if one of the
| legs doesn't seem very beneficial.
|
| There are plenty of scenarios cutting hours off will improve.
| Whether there are enough of them to make Boom profitable is
| another matter.
| parhamn wrote:
| I made this comment earlier, but Wendover has a great video on
| this very topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
| quux wrote:
| No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
| tzs wrote:
| That's not really an apt comparison.
|
| When iPod came out there were numerous successful portable
| music players already on the market. The iPod skeptics were
| not skeptical that there was a market for a portable music
| player--they were skeptical that the iPod's particular
| combination of features and limitations would do well.
|
| With supersonic passenger service no one has demonstrated
| that there is actually a viable market for it. The two prior
| attempts were both heavily subsidized by government (Russia
| for the Tu-144, France and the UK for the Concorde).
|
| It is quite different to ask "why do you think this product
| will do well against a bunch of established, viable
| competitors?" and to ask "why do you think this product can
| succeed in a market that everyone who has tried before has
| failed in?".
| quux wrote:
| IIRC Concorde development was highly subsidized by the
| government but it became a sustainable business for British
| Airways as long as there were wealthy business travelers
| willing to pay a huge premium to get between the financial
| centers of NYC and London in 3 hours. After 9/11 a lot of
| that business went away and Concorde wasn't viable anymore.
| notahacker wrote:
| Boom is taking the government's role, not BA's. I once
| did a back of the envelope calculation which suggested
| the government could have lost less money paying for a
| NY- Europe business class ticket on a regular aircraft
| for every person ever to fly Concorde. It was as
| spectacularly bad commercially as it was impressive
| technologically.
|
| It was a sustainable business for BA because they got
| several aircraft at giveaway prices (the minister who
| sold them conceded it may have been the worst deal ever
| negotiated by a government!) which they could charge
| extortionate rates to fly on, but they still weren't
| flying more than one of them at a time very often.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
|
| > - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special
| one for one route
|
| On both of those, the passengers are kings. If enough people
| decide they want to pay a lot to cross the ocean quickly, those
| things will not be a problem.
| [deleted]
| theptip wrote:
| Can't you do coast-to-coast? I thought the requirement is no
| sonic boom over land, but you can fly out over the ocean and
| then turn around at Mach N. Eg SF<>NYC would be an obvious
| route that is worth adding some miles at the start, if you can
| go 3-4x quicker.
| mpweiher wrote:
| The boom happens whenever you're flying supersonic, not just
| when you transition from < Mach 1 to > Mach 1.
| lvspiff wrote:
| I hope everyone is given flight suits as just the image of a
| plane full of people making a 180 degree turn at 600mph to
| accelerate to 740mph is somewhat comical. I know not entirely
| what you are suggesting but its immediately the thought that
| came to mind.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The plane might not be efficient at subsonic or transonic
| speeds.
| dharmab wrote:
| A sonic boom is a continuous noise, not just at the
| transition. You perceive it as a single noise at the ground,
| but so does every other person along the entire flight path.
|
| Boom's aircraft uses a modern design that reduces the
| loudness of the sonic boom.
| theptip wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, I did have that incorrect. TIL.
|
| Interesting follow-up -- from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom, the angle of the
| shockwave cone decreases (i.e. gets narrower) as the
| plane's velocity goes up. I'm wondering at what Mach number
| would the cone be tight enough that it doesn't intersect
| land?
| aetherson wrote:
| The world is also a lot richer now than it was in the 70s. Some
| luxuries that didn't make sense 40 years ago may make sense
| now.
| avernon wrote:
| The Concorde basically used afterburners. It used fuel at
| incredible rates. Boom is using more modern engine technology
| that can achieve the high cruise speeds using less fuel. This
| also increases effective range.
|
| So it solves 2,3, and 4. Can do Pacific. Cheaper to operate.
| Can be used on all overseas routes.
| kleton wrote:
| >[Concorde] used reheat (afterburners) only at take-off and
| to pass through the upper transonic regime to supersonic
| speeds
|
| The Concorde was capable of supercruise.
| defaultname wrote:
| Flying above the speed of sound without using afterburners is
| referred to as supercruise, and it is something the Concorde
| was capable of doing.
|
| There aren't a lot of supercruise aircraft out there. The
| F22, for instance, can supercruise effectively, but the F35
| cannot.
| iab wrote:
| True, but in defense of the F-35 it also can't fly very far
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Concorde only used the afterburner in takeoff, and while
| transitioning to supersonic. It would happily cruise
| supersonic without the afterburner.
|
| Still, we have had a few years of engine technology
| improvements since then.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Note that the Concorde B (which never happened due to the
| eventual low sales of Concorde A) would've had no
| afterburners, and been quieter for climb-out and
| significantly lower fuel burn; it certainly was getting
| within reach during the time period of its development.
| mshook wrote:
| Concorde engines were actually some of the most efficient
| ones while cruising above Mach 1.7 (because afterburners were
| only used to take off and to go transonic until M1.7). So it
| was efficient but only when flying fast.
|
| Wiki says: The overall thermal efficiency of the engine in
| supersonic cruising flight (supercruise) was about 43%, which
| at the time was the highest figure recorded for any normal
| thermodynamic machine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593
| masklinn wrote:
| That's basically all fast flying planes. Engines are
| designed and tuned for cruising speed, not for going up to
| cruising speed.
|
| The SR-71 was not exactly manoeuvrable or efficient at low
| speeds, its efficiency range was above M3.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise
|
| The Concorde only needed afterburners to get to speed and
| altitude. They did not use afterburners for supersonic flight
| at altitude.
|
| According to someone on the talk page, the Concord's engines
| acted as ramjets at high altitude.
| mshook wrote:
| Not at all, the magic was in the intake which slowed down
| the air so the turbojet engine could use it. And that's why
| it was so efficient when flying at VMAX.
|
| Wiki again: Forces from the internal airflow on the intake
| structure are rearwards (drag) on the initial converging
| section, where the supersonic deceleration takes place, and
| forwards on the diverging duct where subsonic deceleration
| takes place up to the engine entry. The sum of the 2 forces
| at cruise gave the 63% thrust contribution from the intake
| part of the propulsion system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-
| Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Wow. This is cool. Looks like cutting-edge technology for
| 1972. (Apollo 11 landing was in 1969) The engines had
| digital control system connected to digital sensors in
| the front of the plane.
| mshook wrote:
| It was cutting edge and in a way the Franco-British
| Apollo program in terms of engineering. I mean not only
| in terms of speed, but engines, material, fly by wire,
| anti skid (aka abs), carbon brakes, CoG adjustment to
| reduce drag, even the now common Airbus flight stick was
| tested on Concorde...
|
| I remember reading a book by an engineer from the
| Concorde program (he's from the UK) who got invited by
| the Americans working on the B-1 bomber (which was
| initially supposed to be a M2.2 thing).
|
| They wanted to exchange about air intakes problems such
| as efficiency, surges, and all. The author was not
| impressed at all by what had been developed and tested on
| the B-1. And he thought what they had on Concorde was so
| much more advanced (he might have been totally biased of
| course).
|
| Because as people say, Concorde was not tested, it was
| developed (hence the many prototypes, pre-production and
| first production models) because a lot of the technology
| had to be created and if it didn't, it had to be modified
| to be usable on a civilian aircraft.
|
| A classic example is pulling the throttle all the way
| back while at full speed: on most fighter jets of the
| era, you'd completely trash the turbine if you did that.
| So they had to create a plane which did the right thing
| for pilots who weren't trained like fighter pilots...
|
| It was also a case of doing all the wrong thing in terms
| of management. Like assembling two of the same things on
| each side of the Channel to please respective
| governments...
| avernon wrote:
| https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/post/will-boom-
| supersonics-...
| vesinisa wrote:
| > Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
|
| Common misconception. The Concorde was absolutely quite
| profitable throughout, and massively so after they adjusted the
| prices down at the very end when it was already being shut down
| due to safety reasons.
| awill wrote:
| safety reasons? There weren't any safety reasons.
|
| The Concorde was the safest plane ever. It flew for 27 years
| with just 1 accident. And that accident wasn't Concorde's
| fault. Another plane dropped metal on the runway, and
| Concorde ran over the metal and got damaged right before
| takeoff.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| There are individual passenger aircraft that flew more
| hours and cycles than the entire Concorde production run
| without incident. The accident where running over a piece
| of metal on a runway during takeoff resulted in a raging
| inferno and ultimately the deaths of everyone on board
| wasn't the first time Concorde's unusually-prone-to-failure
| tyres had punctured a fuel tank when they exploded, or
| something likely to happen if a different aircraft ran over
| the same piece of metal. Separately, it also had two
| spontaneous in-flight structural failures of the rudder.
| All this in a production run of 14 aircraft that spent most
| of their life on the ground.
|
| Considering it was a complete novelty designed in the 1970s
| it did OK, but I don't think there are many airframes its
| safety record compares favourably with.
| pkulak wrote:
| The biggest problem is that supersonic just steals first-class
| passengers from other routes, where the profits are higher.
|
| Also, far higher climate impacts, which is what concerns me the
| most. Lets just be happy with crossing an entire ocean in 6
| hours.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| While you are canabalizing some of your own 1st class
| passengers, the first airline to get a supersonic route going
| will also take first class passengers from other airlines.
| pkulak wrote:
| You mean the third airline? This has already been tried
| before, and the financials didn't work out the first time.
| Maybe everything has changed, but who really knows.
|
| And frankly, I'm hoping for failure. Some of these new
| super-sonic companies are trying to get approval for
| continental routes, saying that the boom is only as loud a
| car door. Like a car door slamming shut for 3000 miles is
| no big deal. The super-wealthy have enough toys to
| inconvenience the rest of us and destroy the climate; they
| can keep hanging out in first class, or on their private,
| subsonic jets.
| usrusr wrote:
| When I read the headline I was quite confused at first, a
| big why why why? Then it came to me, it's a business bet
| on wealth concentration. Conventional first will always
| be far more comfortable, private far more convenient, but
| supersonic easily outdoes them both in bragging rights.
| And think of the networking opportunities when (if?)
| passengers are almost as packed as in coach despite
| paying a huge entry fee!
|
| And the environmental aspect won't feel too bad actually:
| if you are traveling first you produce x times as much
| CO2 for your trip as others (how many more could they
| take aboard if that are was as densely packed as
| regular?), only because you are, well, too soft to sit
| out a few hours. But if the CO2 happens because
| supersonic, you get something very real in return. Time!
| Who could blame you?
| qayxc wrote:
| > - Noise means you can't do US domestic
|
| The companies working on supersonic jets are in process of
| lobbying hard to get FAA approval for exemptions from noise
| regulations. [1]
|
| > - Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
|
| Not their target market, they want to be a successful niche.
|
| > - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
|
| They claim improvements in fuel efficiency and their unique
| selling point (apart from the speed advantage) is the use of
| "green" fuels (whatever that implies). Also, see previous
| point: they don't want to be mainstream anyway.
|
| > - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special
| one for one route
|
| Not a problem they want to solve. Niche and all.
|
| While the economics are indeed questionable, these products
| cannot be compared to flagship products like Concorde. The jets
| are significantly smaller (50 PAX vs. 92-128 PAX), benefit from
| 50 years of progress in aviation technology, manufacturing, and
| operations and they have a very specific use case in mind.
|
| Concorde was the result of a technological dick-waving contest
| between Western Europe and the US w.r.t. civil aviation
| technology. Its purpose was as much of a political nature as it
| was an attempt at testing/demonstrating the practicality of
| supersonic passenger jets.
|
| It ultimately failed, but that doesn't mean contemporary
| attempts have to due to the differences in scope, technology
| and potentially regulatory environment.
|
| I remain sceptical, but I wouldn't want to write it off as a
| failure from the get-go.
|
| [1] https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/flight-
| te...
| andi999 wrote:
| Even if they get an excemption, affected people will probably
| come with pitchforks and torches to the headquarter. These
| supersonic booms are really loud.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| I grew up under fairly constant sonic booms. They always
| seemed pretty cool because it meant a high performance
| aircraft was overhead. I'm sure they annoyed some people.
| They excited some people. And they just became mundane to a
| lot of people.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Are you confusing sonic booms with regular loud aircraft?
| Sonic booms over land are illegal in most countries. The
| US military only ever does supersonic exercises far
| offshore.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| It happens accidentally from time to time. It's easier to
| do (accidentally or on purpose) in some planes, and
| engine-variants than others.
| TinkersW wrote:
| I grew up in a remote part of northern California, and I
| can assure you that every so often a military jet would
| would fly right over our house at super sonic speeds(and
| very low altitude, barely above the tree tops).
|
| It was mind numbingly loud and obnoxious-the entire house
| would shake and rattle and you couldn't hear anything but
| the rumbling.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I also grew up with constant sonic booms. There is no way
| to mistake a loud aircraft for them. This is like
| mistaking a loud engine with a gun shot.
|
| I grew up in Germany, and whatever the laws said
| (probably sonic booms were illegal), they didn't apply
| for the allied troups (mostly British and American in my
| region). So jet fighters going supersonic pretty close to
| the ground were a rather common thing, you might hear one
| once a week or so.
|
| (Technically, Germany became only with the 2+4 treaty in
| 1990 a fully souvereign nation, formally ending the
| occupied state after WW2)
| jjwiseman wrote:
| The U.S. military does supersonic flights over land, too.
| For example, see page 39 of the R-2508 Complex Users
| Handbook[1], the section titled "Supersonic Operations".
| The R-2508 complex[2] is an airspace around the area of
| Edwards Air Force Base in California.)
|
| 1. https://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/R-2508%20User%27
| s%20Ha... 2. https://www.edwards.af.mil/About/R-2508/
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I'm not the person you are replying to, but there is a
| possible explanation if the person is American. In 1964
| the FAA organized an experiment to perform supersonic
| fly-overs of Oklahoma City over a period of 6 months.
| Quoting from Wikipedia "the experiment was intended to
| quantify the effects of transcontinental supersonic
| transport (SST) aircraft on a city, to measure the booms'
| effect on structures and public attitude, and to develop
| standards for boom prediction and insurance data."
|
| Link to the wiki page if you are curious
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_te
| sts
|
| Here are some highlights
|
| - The US Airforce performed ~8 booms per day between 7am
| and the afternoon
|
| - In the first 14 weeks, 147 windows in the city's two
| tallest buildings were broken
|
| - An attempt to lodge an injunction against the tests was
| denied by a district court judge, who said that the
| plaintiffs could not establish that they suffered any
| mental or physical harm and that the tests were a vital
| national need
|
| - Testing was paused for a time when activist groups
| sought a restraining order against the testing
|
| - The Saturday Review published an article titled The Era
| of Supersonic Morality, which criticized the manner in
| which the FAA had targeted a city without consulting
| local government
|
| - All this public pressure ended the testing early
|
| - There were 9,594 complaints of damage to buildings,
| 4,629 formal damage claims, and 229 claims for a total of
| $12,845.32, mostly for broken glass and cracked plaster.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > There were 9,594 complaints of damage to buildings,
| 4,629 formal damage claims, and 229 claims for a total of
| $12,845.32, mostly for broken glass and cracked plaster.
|
| That doesn't seem much money. Even with inflation which
| makes it $110,600ish it seems very reasonable. I can
| imagine one difficult window install making up this much.
| bentsku wrote:
| Yeah in France we have them too, I live not too far from
| Mirage/Rafale air bases, and they fly over sometimes. I
| remember it was more common around the 2000s, nowadays I
| hear it less than once a year. I think it happened over
| Paris last year and people freaked out, calling for a
| bomb and everything.It was for an interception mission.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/boom-
| noise-r...
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| I remember hearing sonic booms while on holiday in wales
| as a child, just looked it up and it looks like a couple
| still happen every year
|
| I assume the military can decide to be exempt from the
| law if they want
| pw201 wrote:
| They can in the UK. Back in January, the QRA Typhoons
| chasing an unresponsive aircraft back in January went
| right overhead at 10000 ft at supersonic speeds. That was
| loud: https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/huge-
| sonic-boom-...
| rsync wrote:
| "Even if they get an excemption, affected people will
| probably come with pitchforks and torches to the
| headquarter. These supersonic booms are really loud."
|
| Agreed.
|
| I grew up near[1] the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs
| and I have a _very distinct_ childhood memory of some cadet
| breaking the sound barrier over our town.
|
| I was (figuratively) knocked out of my bed. It was
| unbelievably loud. I thought the world was ending.
|
| To be fair, this was probably a very low altitude flight so
| it was probably much worse than a "normal" sonic boom.
|
| Still...
|
| [1] Canon City, CO
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > They claim improvements in fuel efficiency and their unique
| selling point (apart from the speed advantage) is the use of
| "green" fuels (whatever that implies). Also, see previous
| point: they don't want to be mainstream anyway.
|
| That seems a logistical issue to me. Airport fueling services
| have Jet A/A1. So airlines buying Boom will have to arrange
| contracts to supply these "green" fuels at service
| destinations?
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| They've been using Prometheus Fuels (a YC-backed company
| with further investment from US DOE and BMW i Ventures)
| thus far, starting with a 2019 deal. It will probably be up
| to United as to how they fuel the aircraft once in service,
| but they are basically touting that it is using a carbon-
| neutral fuel source all through R&D and Prometheus is using
| Boom to show that it can produce A1 (or possibly JP-8 with
| additives) in some new ways starting with ethanol and
| renewable energy sources.
|
| https://www.globenewswire.com/news-
| release/2019/06/18/187048...
|
| https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/09/20200916-prometheu
| s...
| gsnedders wrote:
| > The companies working on supersonic jets are in process of
| lobbying hard to get FAA approval for exemptions from noise
| regulations. [1]
|
| Note that Boom _isn't_ focusing on noise currently, unlike
| the other companies (which are much more focused on bizjets),
| knowing this will limit the routes they can fly on even with
| any regulatory changes.
|
| They're content to start with just the oceanic routes (and
| notably they're aiming for longer range than Concorde, and
| able to fly at least some trans-Pacific routes non-stop);
| presumably future iterations when it's known whether there
| will be regulatory changes (and what they'll be) could aim
| for lower noise and overland flight.
| jvm wrote:
| To actually answer your questions:
|
| - Noise means you can't do US domestic
|
| They don't seem to be targeting this.
|
| - Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
|
| They do seem to be attempting Pacific range.
|
| - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
|
| They are trying to bring down costs considerably.
|
| - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special
| one for one route
|
| This will certainly be a drawback, although if they could take
| e.g. 50% of premium transoceanic it won't be so specialized.
| nine_k wrote:
| If the plane goes supersonic at 10 miles of altitude, will it
| still make much sound on the surface? It's not just distance,
| it's the pressure of the air at the altitude, too.
|
| Haven't engines improved a lot since 1967?
|
| No idea about cost, but currently oil is cheap and abundant,
| compared to 1970s, and the U.S. has a large domestic supply.
|
| Regarding identical planes, I suppose first Boom's supersonic
| planes are going to be mostly identical. But even standard
| airliners get small changes with every dozen planes built.
| nimbius wrote:
| you forgot another big one the Concord faced: cosmic radation.
| The plane carried a geiger counter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Radiation_concerns
| ginko wrote:
| But even if you get a higher dose per unit of time, you spend
| less time in the air so your overall dose is lower. Your link
| mentions that. I guess the main exception would be for
| personnel that did a lot of flights. That could be reduced by
| requiring longer ground breaks than with subsonic aircraft.
| dharmab wrote:
| The amount of radiation you receive during a regular flight
| is quite small, and more than you would receive on a
| supersonic flight: https://youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0?t=307
| vmarsy wrote:
| Right, that's something I was wondering when Boom was
| announced a few years back [1]. Will radiation be even worse
| for the crew if the plane body is made of carbon-fiber vs
| thicker metal like the Concorde was?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12791122
| varjag wrote:
| The first one (or at least aspires to).
| nemetroid wrote:
| Do they? The FAQ suggests that they are not aiming to do
| supersonic flight over land:
|
| > Won't the sonic boom be loud?
|
| > Overture flights will focus on 500+ primarily transoceanic
| routes that benefit from supersonic speeds--such as New York
| to London or San Francisco to Tokyo. Overture won't generate
| a sonic boom over land cruising at subsonic speeds.
| andi999 wrote:
| So what are the other 497+ possible routes (new York Paris
| also works) ? I read somewhere that after a Concorde test
| flight to Singapore, India complaint strongly and stopped
| the airway.
| cedilla wrote:
| It should be noted that these problems aren't the only
| important reason why Concorde failed. Pre-orders were made in
| 1963-1967 and almost all were cancelled in 1973 due to the oil
| price shock, in addition to a 500% increase in sales price.
|
| Concorde had a bit of bad timing. It was released during the
| worst crisis of aviation (until 9/11), and there was already a
| second version planned with increased fuel efficiency, but that
| came never to be with all orders being cancelled. And those
| cancellations also meant that all economies of scale advantages
| were gone.
| jameshart wrote:
| In fact, specifically _United_ ordered six Concordes in 1966,
| and canceled the order in 1972.
|
| Plenty of time for this deal to go south.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Concorde had a bit of bad timing. It was released during
| the worst crisis of aviation_
|
| It doesn't feel like Boom has the timing on its side either.
| Feels like we're still in a massive aviation crisis and I'm
| not sure how long it's gonna take before things look good for
| the industry.
| mrandish wrote:
| > Feels like we're still in a massive aviation crisis
|
| Commercial aviation tends to be a cyclical industry so
| there will always be a crisis somewhere on the horizon.
| Airlines like United are trying to broaden their offerings
| so that they can better maintain margins in a downturn.
| Some "Time is Money" expense account travelers will always
| have money to spend on a premium product like getting there
| twice as fast.
| gpm wrote:
| On the flip side Boeing seems to be in the middle of
| imploding, the ideal time for a new player to come in.
| nopzor wrote:
| i agree with the gist of your comment, but the us
| government will never allow boeing to truly implode.
| _ph_ wrote:
| But if we are, as I hope, on the peak of the crisis, and
| Boom wants to come to marked towards the end of the decade,
| it could be there exactly at the time the airline industry
| is in the next boom.
| standardUser wrote:
| In what way is there a crisis? The major US carriers keep
| expanding. keep adding new routes, buying more places, etc.
| Air travel was at an all time high before the pandemic and
| is likely to rebound and hit new records in coming years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| No way. Commercial air travel is ready for a 10 year
| slowdown.
|
| The main profit center for commercial air travel was
| businessmen going places, not too concerned how much
| flights would cost.
|
| Now business meetings happen by video conference. Flying
| round the world for a 3 hour meeting will never be big
| again.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| TBH, I fully expect that by the end of this year our
| company will resume sending management on two-week
| excursions every six months to Hyderabad.
|
| Now we know how to leverage video conferencing for
| meetings, and we are convinced more than ever of the
| limitations given current technology.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fairness, most business travel is not flying around
| the world for a 3 hour meeting. I do expect events,
| roadshows, series of customer meetings, etc. to come back
| --albeit probably gradually and _perhaps_ not reaching
| prior levels.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Commercial air travel is ready for a 10 year slowdown."
|
| You're not really offering any evidence, just
| speculation. The actions of the major airlines suggest an
| expansion, not a retraction.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Are they expanding... Or are they switching towards more
| fuel efficient planes with the expectation that it won't
| be long before countries start restricting flights that
| produce too much CO2?
| bluGill wrote:
| Airplanes have a lifespan. Janky "third world" countries
| will let you fly a plane that should have been scrapped,
| but the big airlines in major countries scrap their old
| planes at the end of life to ensure flying is safe.
| Getting more fuel efficient planes is a side effect (and
| with the cost of fuel one they are excited to get)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If Boom succeeds, we'll get less expensive supersonic
| travel (that is going to compete against something
| ballistic like Starship). If Boom fails, someone will buy
| the tech and still use the jigs, tooling, and IP for
| something in the aerospace domain (hopefully). Either way,
| Boom folks get to work on something they enjoy and is
| meaningful to them (hopefully), and we all get any benefit
| (hopefully) from their time grinding on aerodynamics, fluid
| dynamics, and material science problems.
| fnord77 wrote:
| did anyone buy the jigs, tooling, etc. for the concorde?
| bentsku wrote:
| Airbus used the new tech for their next generations of
| plane I believe. I guess the fly-by-wire has been used
| for the A320 soon after. ABS brakes, a more resistant
| steel alloy, there is this list in French for some of the
| innovation made for the Concorde and used elsewhere
| afterward.
|
| http://www.club-concorde.org/ssc/ret_tech-fr.htm
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Different times. Communications and financing are a
| different beast today. One can reach out to folks they'd
| never have interacted with in the old days (Twitter, for
| example). Someone with experience could put together 7
| digit financing in a few days, 8 digit financing in
| weeks, maybe more.
| shakezula wrote:
| This is one of the most interesting features (or bugs,
| depending who you ask) about the current time we live in.
| We can organize massive funding and technological efforts
| like this over morning coffee and Twitter banter.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I think Airbus owned them outright.
| cedilla wrote:
| Airbus pledged to supply to tools and spare parts for
| Concorde until the late 2000s, so yes.
|
| (Of course they stopped supplying them in 2003 when the
| service was retired after the crash).
| tiborsaas wrote:
| If Boom fails, it will be a glorious day for tech
| journalists to write the punniest headline.
| wussboy wrote:
| I admire your restraint.
| lumost wrote:
| Boom's premise is that they can reduce the sonic booms to
| acceptable levels while making incremental progress on fuel and
| maintenance costs.
|
| Airlines are likely expecting that business trips flying coach
| are going to radically diminish. Offering a super-premium fast
| flight for the remaining business travelers who must travel but
| have a reduced tolerance for it is a smart move.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| But isn't Boom selling a vision for affordable supersonic
| flights?
|
| What you're suggesting about "super-premium" flights doesn't
| map to what's being publicly said about Boom or the
| fundamental principles of commercial flying. As a matter of
| fact, the Concorde ultimately failed for those very same
| niche-economy reasons.
|
| What's your source for saying that business trips flying
| coach will diminish?
| lumost wrote:
| > What's your source for saying that business tripes flying
| coach will diminish?
|
| That's an unsourced opinion based on personal experience.
| Zoom has become a much more common method of connecting
| with remote teams. I don't see a compelling reason to
| travel for non-critical business functions, and if the
| travel is that business critical then I can probably get my
| company to pay the expense of a premium ticket.
|
| There are probably 2 travel occasions per year where the
| business travel is more of a "fun" activity such as
| conferences etc. I'll still fly coach for those.
| bluGill wrote:
| In my experience zoom meetings work a lot better if you
| meet the people in person once in a while. Human nature
| is someone you know in person is more trusted than an
| image on a screen.
| iso1210 wrote:
| So instead of flying trans atlantic every 2 months it's
| once a year. That's an 80% drop in demand.
| ghaff wrote:
| Affordable is relative. International business class from
| NYC to London is probably going to run you $3-4K RT for a
| business class seat which is absolutely routine for senior
| business people. Assuming you consider that affordable--
| which it certainly is compared to a private plane--a 50%
| premium over that would still seem to be in the affordable
| category. Doesn't mean it's cheap of course.
|
| The Concorde was a premium over sub-sonic first class but
| it wasn't anything like double.
| theptip wrote:
| Agreed, I thought Boom was positioning itself as "the cost
| of a business class ticket", not "the cost of a Concorde
| ticket".
| iso1210 wrote:
| JFK-LHR-JFK business class is about $9k assuming you're
| travelling fairly flexibly without a Saturday night away,
| at least pre-covid.
|
| Even a month away I can't see a direct flight for less
| than $8k return leaving JFK evening of Jul 11th and
| returning July 16th.
|
| The flights are pretty much empty at the moment, but they
| would be at any price. Doesn't mean that VS/DL will sell
| for $7k (undercutting BA/AA's $8k), it's effectively a
| cartel.
| ghaff wrote:
| First of all, don't be surprised if a goal of "the cost
| of a business class ticket" translates into something
| like 50% or 100% more.
|
| Also the Concorde was not that much of a premium over
| first class on, say, a 747. I'm remembering +30% or +50%.
| Of course, that first class ticket was very expensive if
| you inflate it to today's money.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| I think Concorde was profitable - at least for British Airways.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, yes. If you ignore the development costs, British
| Airways turned an operating profit.
| mshook wrote:
| Same with Air France, Concorde got profitable with all the
| special flights (supersonic loops, world tours and all
| these).
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Boom talks about
|
| - much lower noise than Concorde (mentioned elsewhere in this
| discussion). Ironically, they reduce the "boom".
|
| - Pacific crossings. 4,900 miles range (
| https://onemileatatime.com/boom-supersonic/ ) Tokyo - Seattle
| is about the furthest within that, at 4,777 miles. California
| to Hawaii is easily in range, USA to Australia is far out of
| range, but Brisbane to Hawaii is in range.
|
| - Article talks about 15 planes not one.
|
| Have they solved those yet? They're not flying yet, so no. But
| that's what they're aiming at.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Tokyo - Seattle is about the furthest within that
|
| There's about the shortest viable route I can imagine. I
| could see refueling stops being a thing, though. SFO-SIN is a
| pretty long flight, so an hour to refuel in Tokyo wouldn't be
| so bad.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > There's about the shortest viable route I can imagine
|
| Right, this (Tokyo - Seattle) seems like a minimum viable
| Pacific crossing.
|
| San Francisco to Tokyo is 5,133 miles, so it is out of
| range.
|
| How about San Francisco to Hawaii, Hawaii to Tokyo, and
| Tokyo to Singapore. ;)
| dharmab wrote:
| Boom's aircraft don't make as loud a sonic boom as Concorde.
| Both NASA and Boom will conduct tests of this design in the mid
| 2020s to measure the sound at ground level in various
| conditions.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/how-nasa-wil...
| nemetroid wrote:
| Are you saying NASA/Lockheed Martin's X-59 is related to
| Boom? Or that Boom have similar goals?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| NASA's flight will validate and improve the computer models
| that Boom is using to design their plans.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Is this a stated plan of Boom's (in particular, with
| regard to noise), or speculation?
|
| Boom's page on why their aircraft won't have the same
| fate as the Concorde focuses purely on (fuel and route)
| economics, not noise [1].
|
| 1: https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/post/will-boom-
| supersonics-...
| dharmab wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R43gKMWAPco
| nemetroid wrote:
| This video doesn't mention sonic booms, nor NASA, at any
| point.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Despite these problems, Concorde managed to fly for a long
| time... on the routes that they managed to fly.
|
| The reasons that they stopped flying were different. It cost a
| lot, and was a lot more cramped than first class or private...
| the competition. Meanwhile, the time you spend in airports
| diluted the time you save by flying faster. If these could fly
| from LCA to a similarly small US port, speed makes a lot more
| sense.
|
| That said, this will probably fail. Most air travel stuff
| fails. I'm hoping it won't. Progress is fun.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I don't think the size of the airport made much difference:
| at LHR and JFK BA had a special lounge and other
| arrangements. You had to arrive 30 minutes before if taking
| luggage, otherwise just early enough to get through fast-
| track security.
|
| https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-cabin--
| passenger-e...
| dalbasal wrote:
| Just the thought of LHR makes me want to go to bed, though
| admittedly, I always fly with the plebs.
| iso1210 wrote:
| LHR T5, arrive 40 minutes before takeoff - especially if
| you're going from a high numbered A gate for a small
| plane (which you could arrange for a premium service)
| security takes about 2 minutes, gate closes at t-20 for
| normal planes.
|
| Not sure why you'd use it from Cyprus (LCA is Larnaca).
| If it could operate on a short runway though, London City
| to JFK or LaGuardia ala the BA airbus would be
| interesting, although the stop for Shannon has never
| appealed.
| [deleted]
| herlitzj wrote:
| afavour (via Benedict Evans) c. 2005
|
| - No charging network, can't drive away from home
|
| - Battery tech not there, no realistic range
|
| - Too expensive, no one will pay that much for a car they can't
| drive anywhere
|
| - Everyone wants an SUV or an affordable sedan, not some niche
| vehicle. Who's going go buy it?
|
| Which ones has Tesla solved?
|
| Moving an industry takes time. Will Boom do it? Who knows. But
| this line of thinking is kind of short sighted and defeatist,
| don't you think?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Tesla has built a charging network, done a lot of work on the
| battery/range, and built an electric SUV.
|
| So I would say they have made at least solid progress on
| three of them.
| herlitzj wrote:
| That's the point. Sitting at the start and saying "We're
| not at the finish" isn't a useful way to get anywhere
| fairity wrote:
| It should be obvious that the market will eventually support
| supersonic flights. The question is just when. OP is probably
| asking these questions to determine if the time is now, or in
| the future.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's clearly a market for it. It's just that the market
| is probably a very different size if a one way trans-
| Atlantic ticket is $5K vs. if it's $20K.
| jollybean wrote:
| Telsa was selling hype to a lot of consumers willing to wait
| for perfection.
|
| Boom is selling a tiny handful of planes.
|
| So they have to solve these problems, largely when they
| launch.
|
| Airlines are not going to run at a loss for a decade while
| things tune up.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| No it didn't. It sold a lotus Elise, because it was the
| cheapest way to deliver a car, and the MVP to showcase
| electric. It did not at all sell hype to consumers waiting
| for perfection
| gibolt wrote:
| It was barely an Elise by the time they shipped. So many
| changes were needed, that they said they'd have been far
| better off starting fresh, which is what they did with
| the S.
| jollybean wrote:
| The early Teslas were overpriced for value delivered.
| They had shorter range, build problems etc..
|
| People wanted to buy them because they were 'buying a
| dream' - and helping to move the ball forward.
|
| There was a huge amount of 'good faith' in the process by
| early customers and supporters. Even to this day.
|
| Tesla is an aspirational brand and people are paying an
| aspirational premium.
|
| Boom will definitely be that as well. Execs will humble
| brag about their Boom flights, everyone will talk about -
| it's super exciting, super cool.
|
| The issue I'm pointing to is scale ... will those smaller
| tranche of buyers be able to support all of the
| operational overhead of the airline and the ongoing R&D
| of the company ... is the question.
| herlitzj wrote:
| Honestly even if all we get out of this is an affordable
| low-carbon jet engine I'd call it a win. At the end of
| the day, Tesla is battery company that makes cars. Maybe
| Boom should try to be a jet engine company that makes
| planes.
|
| edit: I say this as someone having little to no real
| knowledge of the aerospace industry :)
| nradov wrote:
| Elon Musk now claims that the final production Tesla
| Roadster used very few Lotus Elise parts. Even though the
| vehicles looked similar they ended up changing almost
| everything, and in retrospect using the Elise platform
| didn't save them anything.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Starting with the Elise provided a massive benefit: the
| ability to iterate. Big Design Up Front would have
| massively failed -- there were way too many unknown
| unknowns.
|
| In the end the product was nothing like the Elise. But
| intermediate products were like the Elise, and could be
| driven and test manufactured and could inform revisions.
| A half complete scratch design could not have been.
| nickik wrote:
| Questionable. Going to a company that had experience with
| car body designs and getting an in-house designer would
| likely have been a better plan for them.
| [deleted]
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Many of their problem was due to the assumption that the
| electric car motor & batters from AC Propulsion were
| working as advertised and ready for mass production. That
| assumption was wrong. So the iteration was because
| changes in the propulsion system resulted in changes to
| the car, and changes in the car led to changes in the
| propulsion system.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Elon also claims that he was the sole founder of Tesla...
|
| ... after he bought out the founder(s).
| tw04 wrote:
| Those were issues of infrastructure which weren't built out,
| but could be built out.
|
| Are you planning on refueling the boom mid-air at supersonic
| speeds?
|
| Tesla also took an approach that analysts who clearly weren't
| "car guys" weren't expecting: mainly creating something with
| massive HP and TQ. Previous electric cars had yawn-inducing
| performance. Someone buying a 5-series probably at least
| partially bought it for the performance, when they got behind
| the wheel of a model S it was like getting behind the wheel
| of a modified M5.
|
| Boom isn't bringing anything new to the table to solve the
| issues people have listed. Tesla had a plan to solve those
| issues from the get-go.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Boom is bringing to the table that the technology has
| advenced in the last 50 years and even the Concorde might
| have succeeded, if a second iteration had made it to the
| market. Also, partially the Concorde failed because Boeing
| opposed it. They were working on their own supersonic plane
| but were a few years behind. Unfortunately, they were so
| successful in blocking the Concorde, that their own project
| failed as the market had become convinced that supersonic
| flight doesn't work out.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| More importantly, where is the budget to "contribute" to
| the campaigns of enough senators to get the ban on
| supersonic flight overturned?
| redler wrote:
| Major airlines like United have a powerful lobbying
| presence. If Boom starts hitting milestones, influence
| spigots will open.
| ibeckermayer wrote:
| Supersonic transoceanic flight seems like a very valuable
| capability in and of itself
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Tesla _has_ at least partly solved some of those, no?
|
| - Charging network: don't they have their own network? I'm
| sure it's not widespread enough to meet everyone's needs, but
| it's not nothing and helped get the ball rolling.
|
| - Battery tech: has been gradually improving, range is now in
| the hundreds of miles which is enough for many uses.
|
| - Too expensive / everybody wants an SUV: starting with
| luxury and sports models and gradually following up with
| mass-market models addresses both of these.
|
| So I think the analogous questions for Boom are good and
| valid questions. Tesla had decent answers and Boom should
| too.
| corndoge wrote:
| That was gp's point I think, that Tesla was panned at first
| and solved their challenges, no reason to dismiss Boom.
| nacs wrote:
| That's the point OP is making -- that people early on will
| be nay-sayers (like in the 2005 post) that then turns out
| to be false.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > that then turns out to be false.
|
| That then turned out to become increasingly false over
| time. Buying the early stage product is a risky bet, you
| hope it will take off like that, but it might not. They
| do need a plan to address them, and to be trustworthy.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Ah, I see, thanks!
|
| I still think the questions are perfectly reasonable. But
| maybe it just needs to be phrased as "how do they plan to
| address these?" rather than "which ones have they
| solved?"
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > But this line of thinking is kind of short sighted and
| defeatist, don't you think?
|
| Not in the airline industry. Aerion just folded, and Boom is
| next.
|
| https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/aerion-shuts-
| down-12346...
| afavour wrote:
| To be clear, my post was not written by me, but by Benedict
| Evans. I reposted it here as it felt like a worthy discussion
| point.
|
| It might be interesting to see Benedict's comments on Tesla
| circa 2005 to see how they compare to Boom today.
| herlitzj wrote:
| True. Updated to reflect your source
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| How many transcontinental flights fly USA domestic routes? If
| this can cut my flying time from Seattle to Beijing, I would be
| a happy camper, hopefully they can go boom over BC, Alaska, and
| the Russia Fareast.
| satellite2 wrote:
| I think the cost analysis was valid in the 70s when CEOs and
| business users were not that different from regular users.
|
| With CEO salaries and more generally inequalities having
| exploded in the last couple decades I think the business model
| might have become viable.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this is key. There are now a lot more rich people who
| would pay for the speed, and just as importantly a chance to
| avoid the hoi polloi, than 4 decades ago.
| afavour wrote:
| Counterpoint: fast, accessible in flight Wifi is a reality
| now. It means that flights aren't anywhere near the kind of
| "dead" time they used to be.
|
| I'm sure some CEOs will pay whatever it costs to boost their
| own egos but IMO that would push them towards private jets,
| not a supersonic flight with United. I find the actual
| arguments for faster flights less persuasive than they were
| in the 70s.
| ghaff wrote:
| Premium air travel is also much more comfortable than it
| was in the 70s. First class was more akin to domestic
| business class today than modern lie flat seating much less
| the real premium roomettes on some airlines.
|
| The connectivity probably does make a difference for some.
| Personally, I appreciate the disconnect time.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Being on a plane isn't technically dead time, but no matter
| what, it's still much more comfortable being on the ground.
|
| And taking 6 hours total out of your flying time means you
| have 6 more hours to enjoy your destination. Unless I was a
| celebrity that would get hounded by the public, I'd rather
| do TSA Pre-check + first class supersonic than a private
| jet.
|
| The caveat for me is that I wouldn't trust a startup that
| is behind its timelines to create a safe aircraft without
| further information.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Supersonic means you can do London-New York for a afternoon
| meeting in a day trip. Leave Wednesday 8AM(UK) flight,
| arrive 6AM(11) in New York for an 8AM(13) breakfast
| meeting, finish up about 1pm(18) and you're on the 3pm(20)
| flight and back home for midnight(UK).
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There are _far_ more CEOs earning ~$500k /year than there
| are making private jet money. I've worked for a half dozen
| pretty successful SMEs and all of the C-Suite flew business
| class and I suspect they'd all take the option to cut a few
| hours off their trip if it was within 50% of the price of a
| standard business class ticket.
| ghaff wrote:
| For that matter, you can get into fairly large public
| enterprises where the CEO is making well into the
| millions and they are not routinely flying private for a
| variety of reasons--but will routinely take premium
| commercial.
| bluGill wrote:
| Private is expensive. For fun I looked into it a few
| years ago. I never did figure out how much a share buy in
| was (6 figures at least), but once you have a buy in each
| flight is still $7000 for a domestic flight (up to 6
| people same price) My entire family can fly just over
| 1000, though that is coach not first class. Even if you
| fly first class private planes are a large step up in
| price.
| slg wrote:
| According to Boom, they are aiming for fares to be the same
| price or cheaper than today's business class travel.
|
| Plus I imagine many of the ultrarich that you are talking
| about would prefer to fly private even if it is slower than
| flying commercial. Flying private also cuts into the time
| saving benefit of supersonic flight. You save time pre-flight
| as you can basically drive up to the plane, get in, and be
| immediately ready for takeoff rather than needing to arrive
| an hour or two early. And private flights operate on your
| personal schedule which is obviously much more convenient
| than organizing your schedule around someone else's timing.
| bluGill wrote:
| Private flights also go where you need to. Not a big deal
| if you are headquartered in a hub and have business at a
| different hub, but as you have business in distance places
| a private plane ends up a lot faster because you don't have
| to wait in hub airports. I know my company keeps a flight
| crew in Frankfort Germany so that the CEO on trips from US
| to India they can land, refuel and change pilots and be off
| in 15 minutes. (I'm not clear if the crew lives there, or
| just flys commercial the day before) Though if supersonic
| airplanes were affordable I believe the CEO makes the US-
| Asia trip often enough to buy one.
| tantalor wrote:
| Recent video that talks a bit about Boom:
|
| > Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might
| Work)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| The intersection of "HN readers" and "Wendover youtube
| subscribers" is surprisingly large.
|
| I also suspect we also all watch Technology Connections,
| Techmoan, LGR, Map Men, HAI, and Periscope Films...
| parthdesai wrote:
| B1M if you're into construction
| wp381640 wrote:
| I never knew I was so into construction until I started
| watching it
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| For similar material, consider _Road Guy Rob_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqdUXv9yQiIhspWPYgp8_XA
| Latty wrote:
| CGP Grey, Practical Engineering, Real Engineering, Real
| Science, Tom Scott, Johnny Harris, NileRed for some others in
| a similar vein.
| bemmu wrote:
| Thanks for the channel tips. I was able to find them all
| except for HAI. Link?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Maybe Half as Interesting
| (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuCkxoKLYO_EQ2GeFtbM_bw)
| ?
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/halfasinteresting/featured
| VonGallifrey wrote:
| I assume that he meant "Half as Interesting". Which is
| Wendover Productions second channel with a different focus.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| You are correct.
| mft_ wrote:
| Although it's not mentioned, I hope people are watching Stuff
| Made Here. If not, definitely check that channel out. Cool
| projects, epic engineering, usually tied together with code.
|
| https://youtube.com/c/StuffMadeHere
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I stopped watching _Stuff Made Here_ because he made me
| feel grossly inadequate :( (seeming as I used to be a
| professional roboticist briefly)
| sneak wrote:
| Veritasium, Electroboom, Photonic Induction, NileRed,
| Practical Engineering, Applied Science, Numberphile, AvE,
| abom79, mugumogu, Surinoel.
| tjridesbikes wrote:
| Welp, you just listed pretty much all of my most-watched
| creators...
| canadianfella wrote:
| PBS Eons
| nemo44x wrote:
| If a seat would be the same as first class today then I'd fly
| this. A 3 hour flight means I can take off at 7AM local and land
| in London at 3PM local and be where I'd like to be by 5:00PM
| local in time for a few drinks and a dinner. This would make jet-
| lag much easier to deal with.
|
| But if it's significantly more, then no.
| lcam84 wrote:
| Do we really have sustainable aviation fuel?
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Its very expensive right now. Expect that to change
| pjerem wrote:
| Of course not.
| swyx wrote:
| one of the most inspiring startups to come out of YC.
|
| i used to despair at YC just churning out more and more b2b
| software bc that is understandably the problem they know well (i
| think a YC partner famously said "you can get to series B just
| selling to YC alums").
|
| But to actually do this in the world of atoms and get market
| validation... bravo. lets hope they keep a pristine safety
| record, of course.
| [deleted]
| pmastela wrote:
| https://outline.com/BFq3RL
| picodguyo wrote:
| Considering they're already being skewered on SNL, I have to
| imagine a rebranding is in the cards.
| https://youtu.be/3c6MqOB4n9o?t=14
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| SNL also famously made fun of Smucker's Jelly, but they're
| still doing $8 billion in annual sales nonetheless.
|
| ("Smucker's" sounds like the Yiddish "schmuck", derived from
| the German word for "ornament" or "jewelry". It's a slang term
| for male genitalia)
| chitowneats wrote:
| I have serious doubts that SNL is culturally relevant enough in
| 2021 to trigger a rebranding exercise for this company.
| picodguyo wrote:
| It's not that SNL is some strong influencer, it's just
| indicative that the current name will be an easy punchline
| and feed into existing fears.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The joke isn't funny. Just like the rest of SNL. Boom will
| be fine.
|
| Seriously. Did any of you think "explosion" before "sonic
| boom" when hearing of this company for the first time? If
| so, would that actually influence your perception of the
| safety of their planes?
| meepmorp wrote:
| It's not SNL's influence, it's the fact that the brand has
| filtered into mainstream entertainment as the butt of a joke.
| Think of it as a signal of a larger problem.
| redler wrote:
| I'd say it depends on whether they're successful. "iPad" was
| widely skewered as a branding choice in popular media, and we
| see how that turned out.
| galgot wrote:
| Maybe good to remember that 18 airlines had once placed orders
| for Concorde, with only the 2 national carriers flying it in
| service eventually. And that The Boeing 2707 was ordered by 27
| airlines before the program being canceled...
| elzbardico wrote:
| Please note that in the aviation space, "ordered x planes" is a
| very, very elastic concept.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I honestly hope VR and other telepresense stuff eats this
| market's lunch. It seems like an awful lot of resources to throw
| at the problem of people needing to read each other's social cues
| in person.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| There will always be a market for faster travel.
| verytrivial wrote:
| And for people smuggling. I wasn't making an economic
| argument for one over the other.
| nickhalfasleep wrote:
| Supersonic aircraft seem like the Erie Canal to me. A much lauded
| technology that gets beaten by an even newer technology.
|
| Any route that could pay for supersonic travel would also take a
| suborbital Starship hop.
| audunw wrote:
| Given the fuel needed per passenger per mile, I don't think it 's
| reasonable to call supersonic planes sustainable, even if they
| use biofuels or synthetic fuels. As long as not all aviation fuel
| is net zero carbon emission, we shouldn't build/use planes that
| are unnecessarily inefficient. Also, biofuels and synthetic fuels
| have their own environmental impact (land use).
|
| Supersonic planes are incredibly cool, but I can't help the
| feeling that it's an unnecessary and harmful luxury at this
| point. Although, that goes for a lot of other things used by the
| ultra-wealthy. Maybe ban yachts first?
| coolspot wrote:
| > Maybe ban yachts first?
|
| Maybe ban population growth that consumes planet's resources
| like mold?
| pumaontheprowl wrote:
| The number one contributor to increasing carbon emissions is
| population growth, but the same people who pretend to be
| outraged about carbon emissions are also the same people who
| were adamant that we needed a full lockdown for COVID so that
| not a single unnecessary person would die. You can't have it
| both ways. You can't say carbon emissions are destroying the
| earth and then do everything in your power to undermine
| earth's natural defenses against overpopulation.
| nickik wrote:
| Jesus, that after 200 years this same argument is still used
| is incredible. But I guess some things never die.
| coolspot wrote:
| That's not very substantial comment of yours.
|
| Did we have global climate change, ecosystems extinction
| and resource depletion 200 years ago?
|
| Every single human on the planet consumes enormous amount
| of resources during their life time, there must be some
| reasonable limit on how many humans the planet can support
| without being turned into concrete jungle with deserts.
| nickik wrote:
| In fact, more humans now then ever and we have more
| resources then we ever had.
|
| > Did we have global climate change, ecosystems
| extinction and resource depletion 200 years ago? lt Yes.
| In fact some of the smartest economists and intellectual
| at the time were panicking about things like 'peak-coal'.
| Sound familiar? Go actually read Jevons. Others were
| panicked about over-population, go read Malthus and the
| Population trap.
|
| There was a massive popular movement in the US predicting
| imminent over-population and resource exhaustion in the
| 60s. Read things like The Population Bomb.
|
| And it always end up with the same fallacy and terrible
| dangerous zero sum ideas. Jevons was so afraid of 'peak
| coal' he suggested the government should roll back
| technological progress so the coal would be available for
| longer.
|
| Paul R. Ehrlich and his ilk suggested that the US should
| not lend of food aid to India and said it was preferable
| for them to starve now in small numbers rather then
| millions later.
|
| Not to mention the horrible, discussing suggestion they
| had about other forcible population control measures and
| not just for India, but they also want such policies in
| the US (This is literal professor from Standford,
| suggesting forced sterilization as a solution).
|
| Of course 'peak oil' that nobody cares about now, was a
| huge thing in the early 1990-2000s. In the 2010 people
| thought rare-earth were gone run out. And yet not a
| single non-renewable resource has actually ever seriously
| run out. Ironically renewable resources like whales are
| far easier to exhaust then non renewable resources.
|
| > Every single human on the planet consumes enormous
| amount of resources during their life time, there must be
| some reasonable limit on how many humans the planet can
| support without being turned into concrete jungle with
| deserts. People obsessed with this id
|
| This is again wrong. This is the exact zero sum fallacy
| that has lead to all the fallicy explained above and
| actually even worse the the much, much worse outcome of
| WW1 and WW2. Read some of the text of some of the German
| High Command before WW1 and all the suggestion they made.
| Read Hitler nonsense about 'Lebensraum'. Its all the same
| idea.
|
| The idea that because if the total resource base is
| fixed, if there are Slaves who are consuming them, it
| means less for the Germans. There is simple logical
| conclusions that can be drawn for that, and they did.
|
| The opposite is actually true. More humans, consistently
| has lead to more resources being available. Not just in
| the absolute but also on a per-human bases. The total
| amount of farm land needed has actually decreased in the
| US. There are far more forests in Europe now then there
| were in 1200.
|
| You can today get 1kg of almost any material cheaper then
| in 1900 and you can get it in higher quality and of
| course you can also get tons of materials that simply
| didn't exist in 1900. Aluminum started out worth more
| then gold and now is not much more expensive then dirt.
|
| Our total energy reserves now are larger then they have
| ever been. The discovery of uranium/thorium alone
| provides 10000x more energy then all forest that existed
| the world in 1500. The discovery of photovoltaic alone
| means we can take gigantic amounts of energy from a huge
| fusion reactor in the sky.
|
| More humans consistently has meant the exact opposite of
| what you are suggesting. Read 'The Ultimate Resource' by
| Simons that was a direct response to the 'Population
| Bomb' people.
|
| The difference between a bunch of dirt, a bunch of stone
| or a bunch of dirty sand is technology. Technology, human
| knowledge and productivity, is what turns utterly
| worthless stuff into resources. The Nevada desert for
| example has been without resources, and now it might turn
| out that it is the single biggest lithium resource in the
| US. What is and is not a resource depends on human
| knowledge and technology.
|
| The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.
| The bronze age didn't end because we ran out of bronze.
| The iron age didn't end because we ran out of iron. The
| oil age isn't ending because we are running out of oil.
|
| Urbanization actually means we can have far, far more
| people using less space then ever before and people even
| do it voluntary. There are huge parts of the US that are
| basically uninhabited and actually are consistently less
| inhabited over time.
|
| We are not even anywhere remotely close to potential
| maximum efficiency of farm land. Our methods have been
| improving year over year for 200+ years. And farming now
| still doesn't look that different compered to 200 years
| ago. We are not close to max productivity. In terms of
| productivity per labor hour farming has improved even
| more then when we simply looking at land productivity.
|
| Using actual simple fact, a marginal increasing in human
| population has actually increase to resource
| availability/consumption by any one human.
|
| Some of the smartest people and intellectuals in history
| who have not understood this effect and it has to be
| relearned and proven wrong over and over. Doesn't matter
| if its Malthus in 1700s or Elon Musk in 1990s. There are
| good and bad things that come out of this, some of these
| people look at this situation and simply do something
| about it themselves, Norman Borlaug or Musk. More often
| however it lead to people who wanted to limit population,
| take resources by force or prevent technological
| progress.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Boom is designing the plane around e-fuels, essentially
| ethanol, which will be created from direct air capture of CO2,
| water, and renewable electricity, making the fuels carbon
| neutral. But you can't drop-in replace A-1 with ethanol,
| potentially the entire platform needs to change.
|
| Depending on the type of renewable energy used in the
| production of the fuels, there might be some land use issues,
| but this is about as close as possible to the least impactful
| transportation option ever designed. Speed is always going to
| decrease fuel economy, but we're not going to tackle climate
| change by taking things away from people. Tech improvements
| like these are exactly what we need to move forward.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Yea, the greenwashing on this thing is just ridiculous. There's
| nothing sustainable about flying, generally. Doing it at
| supersonic speed? C'moooon
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Given the fuel needed per passenger per mile
|
| What are the expected numbers for the Boom plane? The Concorde
| was a little over 1/3 as efficient per passenger-mile compared
| to a contemporary 747. I seem to recall that the planned
| successor to the Concorde was considerably more fuel efficient.
|
| I imagine it would still be more thirsty than a typical
| subsonic airliner, but I am curious to know how it actually
| pencils out.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| So far we've made zero progress actually cutting emissions. So
| why not plan for a world where everyone just keeps emitting?
| That's what every other company and industry is doing...
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| > So far we've made zero progress actually cutting emissions
|
| Are you speaking in terms of gross emissions overall? Because
| a wide variety of things have individually cut emissions
| substantially.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Net co2e globally. I believe it's flattened out since covid
| hit at least, the issue being we need it to fall massively
| and we can't rely on having a pandemic every year...
| jeromegv wrote:
| Companies and industries won't have to pay to build a wall
| around Miami to protect it from water... or the repair to New
| York when everything gets flooded. That's why a government
| needs to step in, companies have no incentives to step in
| (why would they?).
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You're right. But what you're saying has been a fact for
| decades. And so far government hasn't stepped in. So do you
| want to live in a cave and hope the government finally
| steps in, or invest in a (carbon intensive) Miami wall
| project and make massive profit?
| isis777 wrote:
| Companies will build planes for whatever the market demands. We
| need regulatory agencies to impose carbon taxes on fuel usage
| so that inefficient planes are prices accordingly.
| floxy wrote:
| What is the current thinking for trying to price-in the
| pandemic-spreading-externalities of intercontinental flights?
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I imagine it's more damaging to the environment to ground
| working old planes and replace them with new ones that are
| 20% more efficient.
|
| Grounding old planes will also result in a greater cost of
| air travel. With increasing nationalism around the globe,
| that may not be a good thing.
| samatman wrote:
| I doubt the first paragraph of this.
|
| Aviation uses incredible amounts of fuel, and commercial
| planes are in the air more often than they are on the
| ground. My guess is that the embodied energy to operating
| energy ratio is lower for planes than for any other
| vehicle.
| WisNorCan wrote:
| Hopefully, the negative effects of extreme sound pollution on
| humans and animals will be considered in the trade-offs to save a
| few hours of flying time for the wealthy.
|
| https://www.nonoise.org/library/animals/litsyn.htm
| iancmceachern wrote:
| From what I remember they've found a way to reduce or eliminate
| the sonic boom issue.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Unfortunately no.
|
| Boom Supersonic don't plan to use low sonic boom
| technologies. They just rely on ICAO and FAA lowering the
| noise standards to allow supersonic flight.
| chrisgp wrote:
| Aren't all of the proposed routes for supersonic planes over
| oceans?
| 0zymandias wrote:
| I might be missing something with your comment, but there are
| obviously animals that live in and around oceans.
|
| So "just" flying at super sonic speeds over oceans seems like
| it could be a disaster for marine life. The disruption to
| whales from noise pollution comes to mind
| samatman wrote:
| Noise pollution in oceans is a serious concern, yes.
|
| But not transferring from the air to the ocean, the phase
| transition attenuates sound a great deal.
|
| It's things like propeller noise and sonar which are
| causing problems. A sonic boom over the ocean is not going
| to ruin any whale's day, short of perhaps alarming them
| when they come up for air.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| How is it that a technologically sophisticated aircraft company,
| that probably burns through cash or needs enough of it, produces
| advances in technology that have the potential to be useful
| downstream in other areas, advances human knowledge and
| experience in a multitude of areas, gets only 141 million, while
| a creative way to sell people ads (FB, IG, SC....) gets billions
| of dollars.
| asperous wrote:
| Valuation is based on risk and net present value of projected
| profits.
|
| Advertising revenue is well proven and arrives quick, while as
| you mentioned this endeavor has high costs, high risks, and is
| not likely to be profitable for a long time, decreasing present
| value.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Boom strikes me as a poor name for a plane.
|
| I think NotBoom might be better.
| nacs wrote:
| My thoughts exactly.
|
| Not just for the "Boom" catastrophic-explosion aspect but also
| for the very-loud "Boom" sound created as the supersonic speed
| barrier is crossed.
| sneak wrote:
| Sonic booms are a continuous wavefront, not caused only once
| upon crossing the "supersonic speed barrier", but radiating
| outward continuously from the aircraft (or rather a
| compression point in front of the aircraft) as it travels.
| Everyone under the flight path of a supersonic craft gets to
| hear the boom as it passes over them, even though it is
| "already" supersonic.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, I wondered at first if it was for real. I mean who okays
| "Boom" as the name of an aircraft company?
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Not worse than Slack as a productivity tool, and yet it
| didn't seem to matter.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, that's true. But it's not my life that I am
| entrusting to Slack.
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| Likely due to the relation between supersonic jets and sonic
| booms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| If you have to explain your name then you probably should
| have kept looking.
| MikusR wrote:
| No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
| capableweb wrote:
| Do airplanes usually spontaneously explode? I'd agree "Crash"
| would be a aweful name, but "Boom Supersonic" makes a lot of
| sense since most people know what kind of sound gets made once
| you reach supersonic speeds, while I don't remember any
| exploding planes really, but my memory has been off before.
| cozzyd wrote:
| What it immediately brings to mind is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Well most aeroplanes don't spontaneously explode, but the
| Boom's immediate progenitor Concorde is famous for having
| done exactly that in Paris upon takeoff. And that was the end
| of that.
| occams_chainsaw wrote:
| I think people would more likely associate "boom" with the
| times planes not-so-spontaneously explode
| some_random wrote:
| The company is Boom, the plane is Overture.
| notatoad wrote:
| it's a perfectly fine name for attracting media attention and
| VC dollars. in a few years they'll sell their IP to boeing or
| airbus and the name will go away.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Zoom was taken.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| "Boom Supersonic" sounds like a company name I might have
| invented when I was 12.
| mathgenius wrote:
| Spacex is getting so good at making rockets, perhaps one day
| people will just take a ballistic trajectory across the atlantic,
| and arrive in 20 minutes! It's hard to imagine anyone being in
| such a hurry. I wonder if the spacex crew has thought about this
| at all.
| mmaunder wrote:
| This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Benefits:
|
| - You're confining the noise to the takeoff zone rather than
| the entire flight path.
|
| - You're in a vacuum (mostly in LEO) which massively reduces
| drag and is way more fuel efficient.
|
| - Reentry and landing require no fuel with good planning. Space
| Shuttle was a glider.
|
| Down sides:
|
| - Atmospheric reentry dissipates a LOT of energy over a short
| time which introduces risk and complexity.
|
| - You expend a lot of energy getting into orbit or your
| trajectory which also introduces risk and complexity
|
| - Vacuum has far greater depressurization risks than 35,000ft
| samatman wrote:
| The main downside is the G forces.
|
| Ten minutes at multiple G and an hour in free-fall sounds...
| fun, kinda? But it also sounds like the kind of thing most
| people wouldn't tolerate very well.
|
| Especially the sort of older folks who could afford it.
| noahmasur wrote:
| You mean like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0
| thoughtpeddler wrote:
| Yes at this rate, Boom is competing more with SpaceX than
| traditional airplane makers. 2029? I read that as 2031-2033. By
| then, the ballistic approach may be commercially feasible.
| thedogeye wrote:
| when will they rename the damn company?!
| jshmrsn wrote:
| Wow, that's a pretty big boost in credibility if the terms of the
| deal are firm. As far as I know XB-1 is still preparing for its
| first test flight. So my assumption is that this deal is a
| commitment to buy if (and that's a big IF), Overture actually
| comes into existence with adequate specs. Hopefully there's some
| immediate money in the deal as well. https://youtu.be/kraWrYS6CsE
| awestley wrote:
| Terrible, terrible name..
| bemmu wrote:
| But it's not bland. You instantly remember it, makes you more
| likely to talk about the company if only to remark on the name,
| and I'd imagine it leads to more press coverage as well.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| Maybe this is excessively YOLO of me, but I would be more
| likely to fly a plane called Boom, not less.
| nemetroid wrote:
| The problem is not the association to "plane explodes", but
| to "sonic boom", one of the major reasons why supersonic
| aircraft never became popular.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| It's a given that this is the entire point of the name:
| "Boom Supersonic" is just a cool-sounding (depending on
| your taste) play on "supersonic boom." It's not like the
| inconvenience of supersonic booms was some secret negative
| connotation that whoever named Boom Supersonic didn't know
| about.
| nemetroid wrote:
| I agree, and it is a memorable name for this reason,
| which has probably helped them _so far_. Still doesn 't
| seem like a good idea to me, though.
| xkjkls wrote:
| All of these purchase agreements you need to look at the
| conditions. Like, what are the exact terms of this purchase
| agreement? What dates need to be met, what price conditions need
| to be met, and how cheaply can those be reneged on. A huge amount
| of time new companies negotiate purchase agreements that have a
| lot of favorable terms in order to generate PR.
| tmilard wrote:
| Bang! Boom
| ciabattabread wrote:
| The planned routes are EWR-LHR, EWR-FRA, and SFO-NRT.
|
| United had pulled out of JFK in 2015, but just recently came
| back, because it turned out JFK's "prestige" factor impacted
| their business. EWR is a major United hub, but the idea of EWR
| being blessed with the "prestige" of supersonic flight is a bit
| funny.
|
| Although I wouldn't be surprised if it gets moved to JFK as
| United rebuilds their operation there. A lot can happen in 8
| years.
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| JFK is also a preferable location for staging supersonic flight
| because you don't need to pass over/near a massive population
| center on a route to northern Europe
| ciabattabread wrote:
| JFK/EWR/LGA - it's the same congested airspace. Does it
| really make much of a difference?
| redler wrote:
| For the market this venture is targeting, JFK and perhaps
| even (after the construction is finally done) LGA would be
| preferable. Both in the city, both have Centurion lounges,
| etc. But LGA is a shorter field without a substantive
| international ops infrastructure. With the end-of-decade
| timeline, I suspect this will end up launching from JFK.
| secondbreakfast wrote:
| LGA doesn't allow any flights from more than 1,500
| miles[^0], so has to be either JFK or EWR.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaGuardia_Airport
| woodruffw wrote:
| Apart from the perimeter limit, LGA's runways are also
| only ~7000ft.
|
| I don't know what Boom's expected runway requirements
| are, but if they're anything like the Concorde's
| (>11000ft), there's no way they'll actually be able to
| take off from LGA.
|
| Edit: At least one source says that Boom's plane requires
| no less than 10000ft[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2018/11/13/aerion-
| boom-taking-...
| redler wrote:
| The LGA perimeter rule already has holes. Denver is
| allowed, and the rule doesn't apply on Saturdays. With
| the much more airline-friendly layout post-construction,
| it would not be surprising if the rule is changed.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Yes. You need to fly over the bulk of NYC to get to Europe
| from EWR. JFK is already out on Long Island.
| quux wrote:
| I think in the case of Concorde JFK was preferred because the
| engines used loud afterburners during takeoff, climb and
| acceleration to supersonic speeds. For noise abatement they
| would takeoff on burners, immediately turn south to stay over
| Jamaica bay, turn the burners off as they crossed over the
| rockaways (populated barrier island south of JFK,) and then
| go back on burners over the ocean to finish
| climbing/accelerating.
|
| A plane like Boom that doesn't use afterburners could take
| off from any airport as long as they stay subsonic over
| populated areas.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Do you think that supersonic flights go supersonic within
| seconds of takeoff? By the time they get to cruising
| altitude, planes that takeoff from JFK and EWR will be well
| outside of NYC. The problem is that the great circle route
| from either JFK or EWR to Europe basically follows the
| Northeast Corridor to Boston.
| nickik wrote:
| What I wonder is about the engines. It seems they are not
| building them. And they seem to make optimistic claims about
| them.
|
| Say what you want about SpaceX but they developed their own
| engines and brought real innovation to the table. I'm a lot more
| skeptical about a company that seems to just wants to buy some
| engine.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Aerion just went out of the SSBJ business, despite having awesome
| tech. ):
|
| How is UA going to monetize this if Concorde isn't even
| (re)flying?
| nerdponx wrote:
| How do they plan to deal with the sonic boom problem that
| relegated the Concorde to ocean-crossing routes? Or will this
| also be relegated to ocean-crossing routes?
|
| What's the market for this? The Concorde was extremely expensive
| to operate and extremely expensive to fly on. Are they predicting
| lots of wealthy people looking for fast international travel
| between North America and East Asia?
|
| > "The world's first purchase agreement for net-zero carbon
| supersonic aircraft marks a significant step toward our mission
| to create a more accessible world," Scholl said in a statement.
|
| > Part of what made buying supersonic jets appealing to United is
| Boom's plan to power the planes with engines that will run on
| sustainable aviation fuel.
|
| How does a net-zero carbon aircraft work? What is "sustainable"
| in this context? Carbon credits?
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Right now, its relegated to ocean crossing routes. They will be
| using synthetic fuels.
| quux wrote:
| Not sure about other countries but under current US laws it
| wouldn't be able to fly supersonically over land. Boom has been
| trying to get the laws to be a limit on noise heard on the
| ground rather than speed but that's going to take a long time
| to change if ever.
|
| If the boom plane or similar is a success and airlines started
| lobbying for change then maybe something could happen.
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