[HN Gopher] American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic...
___________________________________________________________________
American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture
aircraft
Author : spatulon
Score : 369 points
Date : 2022-08-16 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boomsupersonic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boomsupersonic.com)
| danvoell wrote:
| Thought it was an acquisition. Maybe change headline to "purchase
| aircraft from"
| gbronner wrote:
| Curious how the combination of remote work, videoconferencing,
| and the really luxurious business class / first class on sub-mach
| aircraft will compare to this.
|
| This is slower and smaller than concorde, so we'll see if the
| market really values speed over convenience / luxury. Boeing made
| the opposite decision 20 years ago when they cancelled the sonic
| cruiser.
| pySSK wrote:
| There is no substitute for F2F for some types of work. Everyone
| I know hates flying, even if it is lie-flat. If someone can
| reduce the pain of flying to UK/Europe and Asia by knocking a
| few hours off then I would definitely prefer it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Timezone differences alone make F2F worthwhile, even if
| you're fully remote. A week here and there face-to-face on
| the same clock is valuable.
| seydor wrote:
| how? jetlagged meetings aren't known for their mental
| clarity
| jaywalk wrote:
| Why would you assume this aircraft wouldn't have a luxurious
| cabin? It looks pretty nice from the one rendering they have on
| the site. 1-1 seating, so direct aisle access for all. Plenty
| of room.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Renders of any new aircraft always show them full of bars,
| gyms, bowling alleys etc, but the reality is just as many
| seats crammed in as they can fit, and then some.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| They are targeting business class passengers, which makes
| sense. Supersonic is not going to make the profits off the
| Ryanair set.
| seydor wrote:
| I dont think supersonic will be a success. Remote has made
| business travel a lot less necessary and more predictable, so
| people are more likely to plan multi-hop business tours rather
| than flash transatlantic and transpacific flights. The failure
| of A380 is also telling: people are fine with flexible hops.
| But most of all people want to reduce their carbon footprint by
| minimizing travel distances, not travel times.
| bombcar wrote:
| So we can kind of rough it out - improving speed will make fuel
| costs go up (but how much?) but other fixed costs will go down
| (pilot time, airframe time, etc).
|
| However you may also be stuck where the people who will pay for
| the faster time are the types who will NOT sit in cattle class,
| so your airplane will have to mainly be first-class/business
| style seating.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a Europe-Australia line that doesn't take two
| days with 3 layovers would sell like hotcakes regardless of
| accommodations.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Qantas is already flying Perth-London direct (17 hours), and
| is seriously exploring options for pulling off Sydney-London
| direct.
| nradov wrote:
| The Boom Overture lacks the range for the Europe-Australia
| line. It would have to make two refueling stops to fly CDG to
| SYD. I think the primary initial market will be
| Transatlantic.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| If they can find a way to add another ~400 nautical miles,
| you could do hawaii.
| nradov wrote:
| If their specifications are accurate, they will be able
| to fly California to Hawaii with an adequate fuel
| reserve. So there may be a market for a few supersonic
| aircraft in that market, but fewer than the Transatlantic
| routes.
| whatusername wrote:
| If you haven't seen it -- Qantas are pushing ahead with
| "Project Sunrise" on A350-1000. So you'd get to MEL or SYD
| without a layover - but with something like a 20 hour flight.
|
| https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-
| anno...
| nwatson wrote:
| This is good news for Greensboro, NC and the NC Triad region. The
| Boom manufacturing/assembly will be done there (at least
| partially). HondaJet already manufactures there, and there are a
| number of other aerospace manufacturers in the area. (A lot of
| embedded and mixed-signal too.)
|
| I live in a neighboring town not far from the boutique Triad
| Semiconductor, which designs digital/analog chips and components
| for many applications, including space.
| ucha wrote:
| To everyone saying this will not work because it's more
| expensive... jets were more expensive than turboprops. And even
| though the former use more fuel, we prefer them.
|
| The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its fuel
| usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can perform
| per day.
|
| The carbon emissions impact of flying a gas-guzzling supersonic
| aircraft aren't evident either. Of course, more gas is used per
| trip but fewer planes need to be manufactured. Since there is no
| supersonic business jet, it could also make sense for some people
| who used to fly private for the speed and convenience to
| reconsider as they may get faster to their destination by flying
| supersonic.
| foo92691 wrote:
| The fuel burned by an aircraft is almost certainly the dominant
| portion of its lifecycle carbon emissions. I expect the carbon
| emissions due to its manufacture are negligible by comparison.
| Have you seen a source either way?
| ucha wrote:
| You're right.
| nautilius wrote:
| > The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its
| fuel usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can
| perform per day.
|
| It is indeed not proportional, but not in the way you are
| thinking. Drag (and ~fuel consumption) scales with velocity
| squared, so a plane flying twice at fast (and neglecting any
| time at the airport, which would make the argument even worse)
| would use four times as much fuel. I.e., even if twice the
| amount of passengers would be served, it would be done for four
| times the fuel consumption and four times the carbon emissions
| (or twice the fuel consumption _per trip_ ).
| panick21_ wrote:
| > a plane flying twice at fast would use four times as much
| fuel
|
| Not that this only applies if they fly at the same altitude.
| If you fly higher you can avoid that. That of course causes
| other problems but it is a relevant factor.
| notahacker wrote:
| And fuel cost is typically more than double the capital cost
| in an airline's budget at subsonic speeds
|
| And the proposed aircraft are less than half the size of the
| aircraft they'd most likely replace, so actually sell _fewer_
| tickets on double the flight numbers
| ucha wrote:
| That doesn't have much to do with the point I'm making. I'm
| saying if you double fuel usage, you don't double the cost of
| using the plane.
|
| As cost of fuel is only a percentage of the price of the
| ticket, it's pretty obvious that there is a threshold as a
| percentage of total ticket cost under which spending 4x more
| in fuel to fly say 1.5x more passengers (because the airplane
| isn't flying 24/7) makes business sense.
|
| That is obviously one of the reasons why they are starting
| with business class tickets because, fuel consists of a
| smaller percentage of ticket cost.
| nautilius wrote:
| Yeah, there is an epsilon on top of fuel. But maybe you
| missed the obvious fact that all aircraft are getting
| slower rather than faster over the last decades, so that
| threshold is in the opposite direction of what you're
| proposing.
|
| And there is zero logic behind your second obviousm, as
| your premise is already wrong. The reason they start with
| business class is because you can charge more per seat.
| Seems pretty obvious.
| ucha wrote:
| Fuel cost, depending on routes, number of business seats,
| seat occupancy is at about 25% of total costs [0]. 75% is
| what you call epsilon? Aircraft speed as barely budged
| since we transitioned from turboprop to jets. That's
| something you could call epsilon.
|
| You're right that they start with business seats because
| they cost more. Business class seats cost 3-4x time
| economy while occupying less than 2x the space so the
| cost of fuel as a percentage of the ticket price is
| lower. It might not be obvious to you but I'm happy to
| explain it :)
|
| [0] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel-logistics-
| and-inf...
| nautilius wrote:
| > 2x the space so the cost of fuel as a percentage of the
| ticket price is lower. It might not be obvious to you but
| I'm happy to explain it :)
|
| See, your claim is that fuel cost is the sole reason they
| do this. I'd argue it's obvious they'd do that even if
| all fuel was free.
|
| > Aircraft speed as barely budged since we transitioned
| from turboprop to jets.
|
| Ah, it's again one of those nonlinearities you seem to
| have trouble with. See, the cost increase is, again, not
| proportional to speed. On top of the quadratic scaling,
| you have a very nonlinear and steep (not-proportional!)
| increase in drag coefficient. So, when you look up that
| what I say is true, but you want to weasel your way out
| by saying 'it's not by much', you're missing that the
| impact on drag (and fuel) is substantial.
| flerchin wrote:
| Not a lot to go on here. Boom projects first flight in 2026 for
| the Overture. They seem to be fairly close to first flight with
| their XB-1, but it has not flown yet. I congratulate them on
| getting funding, but all the hard parts are ahead.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1
| zionic wrote:
| By 2026, with the typical delay till 2028 they'll face the
| prospect of Earth-2-Earth starship flights
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| yeah, id put that in the 30s, thers a lot more risk there.
| rnk wrote:
| earth to earth starship flights are way away and will be
| vastly more expensive. Plus more risky. You are lifting
| that giant ship up into space.
|
| It must be less efficient than a winged flyer - even a fast
| one like boom's, because it won't need so much energy to
| get out of the atmosphere like a starship has, right? I
| want starship to succeed but I'm guessing it will be so
| much more expensive and risky.
| ac29 wrote:
| Given that Starship hasnt even had its first unmanned orbital
| test flight yet, getting man rated and ready for commercial
| flights by the general public within 4-6 years seems
| unlikely.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Awkward... The website FAQs still say "XB-1 test flights are
| planned for early 2022."
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Way more delayed than that. Once upon a time, they were
| planning on test flights in 2017. Then 2018. Then 2019. Then
| 2020. Etc.
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/culture/boom-
| xb1-superson...
|
| https://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/20/centennial-boom-
| supers...
|
| https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/paris-boom-
| xb-1-schedu...
| 0x457 wrote:
| XB-1 is a prototype plane for R&D. It's target first flight
| now is fall 2022.
|
| Overture is a production model for commercial operations.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ehich measn, technically and legally, XB-1 isn't an
| aircraft. As pointed out elsewhere, the hard stuff is up
| ahead. Cudos so for BOOM for having customers signed on,
| something a lot of eVTOL companies only managed to do very
| recently.
| zymhan wrote:
| They still don't have an engine that allows them to fly
| supersonic...
| chroma wrote:
| Boom's original bet was that they could use better
| aerodynamics and materials to get supersonic speeds using
| existing engines. This saves a ton of time and money since
| you don't need to get the engines certified. The prototype
| uses three non-afterburning GE J85 engines[1], which produce
| 2,950 lbs of thrust each. It should have a top speed of mach
| 2.2.
|
| The main issue is that their production aircraft will need
| more powerful engines, and modern civilian airliner engines
| have large fans, high bypass ratios, and high compression
| ratios, all of which make them difficult to adapt to
| supersonic flight. It looks like their plan is to collaborate
| with Rolls-Royce to build a suitable engine using an existing
| engine core. I hope they can pull it off.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_J85
| starwind wrote:
| From SNL: Start-up airline Boom Supersonic has announced it is
| going to fly passengers anywhere in the world in four hours or
| less for just a hundred dollars. So get ready to fly fast and
| cheap on the only airline named after the sound of an explosion.
|
| On a personal note, this company is based out of Centennial
| Airport (KAPA) which is in my neighborhood
| ds wrote:
| Meaningless PR bullshit without knowing how much the down payment
| was.
|
| Wouldnt be surprised if American put less than 1m down, which
| makes this nothing more than a slightly expensive PR campaign.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| If TSA is abolished or scaled down significantly then this plane
| is dead on arrival.
|
| 7hrs London to NYC are more than acceptable, too bad it ends up
| being 10hrs
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| It already is if you fly business class. I've done drop off to
| gate <10 minutes at LAX & SEA multiple times.
| th1s1sit wrote:
| choletentent wrote:
| To the marketers at Boom, what a terrible name choice for an air
| plane company fellows.
| pdx_flyer wrote:
| I can't roll my eyes enough.
| JCM9 wrote:
| Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like
| NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy
| carriers. If one airline has supersonic and others don't that
| could be a huge blow to the others.
|
| Of course things didn't work out that way with Concorde, which
| was not commercially successful and more of a spectacle than
| something founded in business fundamentals. But if Boom can make
| supersonic passenger travel economics work out it would certainly
| be hugely disruptive.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > big legacy carriers
|
| Who are the new "non-legacy" carriers in this setting?
| N1H1L wrote:
| United also has a deal with Boom, that was June this year.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193
| alamortsubite wrote:
| That deal was June of last year (2021). They've been
| advertising the upcoming service in-flight since last summer.
| ghaff wrote:
| There was also signage in O'Hare I think last time I passed
| through. Struck me as odd.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >Overture's order book, including purchases and options from
| American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines stands
| at 130 aircraft. Boom is working with Northrop Grumman for
| government and defense applications of Overture.
| neither_color wrote:
| My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic
| has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying
| and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the
| supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure
| it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines
| making it work.
|
| I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the
| list of busiest routes shows that Asia dominates the list.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...
| potatolicious wrote:
| Agree that this would be important except that there's
| basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific
| flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate
| trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic
| passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range
| to pull it off.
|
| I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for
| me. It's a relatively short flight with a _lot_ of ground-
| side overhead time, so the benefits of Going Very Fast seem
| pretty minimal. The prospect of SFO-HND or LAX-ICN very fast
| though seems a lot more appealing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY)
| without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days
| though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner
| in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in
| Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable
| than flying coast to coast.
| ksala_ wrote:
| I flew DUB-NYC-SEA recently, and honestly DUB-NYC on an
| a320 was a lot more comfortable than NYC-SEA on a 737...
| atourgates wrote:
| The leaked United / Apple data[1] from 2019 was an
| interesting data point for this demand.
|
| At the time, Apple was booking 50 business-class seats a day
| just between San Francisco and Shanghai.
|
| That's one company, on one route. Representing one segment of
| demand.
|
| Certainly, things are likely to change with the effects of
| Covid, but I think there's a lot of substance to your
| perspective.
|
| [1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/14/united-airlines-apple-
| biggest...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Boom would be lovely for LAX/SFO to Singapore if the range
| allowed it. That could take some of the higher end traffic
| away from middle eastern carriers to the region.
|
| I don't see it doing so well for the middle eastern markets,
| ultra long hauls on average spend a lot of time flying over
| land (minus the Australian flights) - for example, see LAX-
| DXB whose only water crossing is the arctic ocean, where
| supersonic might not be allowed for ice preservation purposes
| https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/.
| .. , DXB-Tokyo which is almost entirely land: https://flighta
| ware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/... , or DXB-
| Cape Town, which again is mostly over land: https://flightawa
| re.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/...
| petesergeant wrote:
| > If one airline has supersonic and others don't that could be
| a huge blow to the others
|
| I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow
| this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats)
| are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way
| to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly
| rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner.
| That'll also depend on the time-of-day of the flight -- worth
| saving the time perhaps if you're traveling East-to-West, but
| for West-to-East might as well just overnight it?
|
| Long story short, I think it'll have use-cases, but it's not
| like Concorde -- when Concorde launched, 1st Class over the
| Atlantic looked a lot like 1st Class inside the states now --
| comfortable, but not somewhere you wanted to spend a lot of
| time
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Modern International First is going the way of the dodo on
| many routes, because business is now more comfortable than
| first was in the past.
|
| Knowing this, Boom is allegedly targeting an equivalent cost
| per mile to a standard business class seat.
| ant6n wrote:
| > Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability
|
| I hope any airline that gets these gets punished by all the
| other customers for the environmental irresponsibility of
| pushing this gass gussling technology.
|
| Wow, you can blow through your whole annual carbon budget in
| only 4 hours!!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Concorde also didn't work out for management reasons and
| generated most revenue right before retirement when they they
| finally lowered ticket prices and stopped flying them half
| empty like the absolute idiots they were.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Really? I thought it was exactly the other way around:
| Concorde was initially underpriced, and only started making
| money once pricing was yanked up to what the market would
| bear.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Interesting, I had heard the opposite. BA did a survey of
| passengers and realized that most passengers had no idea how
| much the tickets were worth since their employers had
| purchased the tickets for them. They thought their employers
| paid more than they actually did, so BA realized that they
| could considerably increase prices without losing many
| customers. BA raised prices and finally started turning a
| profit on Concorde.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I recall Concorde was something like 30% over first
| class. Which was very expensive at the time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The way I heard it was that prices were 30% over first
| class but passengers thought that prices were 3X the cost
| of first class. Worst of both worlds -- price sensitive
| travellers wouldn't even bother checking out Concorde as
| an option, and price insensitive travellers weren't
| paying as much as they were willing to pay.
| darrenf wrote:
| Do you have a source for this? Like other folk who have
| replied, this is the opposite to my understanding, at least
| from the perspective of BA (I know nothing about AF).
| heritageconcorde.com[0] talk about almost 20 straight years
| of profitability:
|
| > _Concorde earned PS500 million for British Airways after
| tax profit, this was between a loss making 1982 and a highly
| profitable 2000 with just seven aircraft. The first
| profitable year was 1983 (PS14 million) increasing to PS54
| million in 1987. BA had good and bad years, in 1992 they
| actually even made a small loss, but then quickly returned to
| profitability. Immediately before the crash the profit levels
| were running at nearly PS60 million and could have returned
| had they kept flying. (Even the last 6 months of operation in
| 2003 netted PS50 million profit)._
|
| And:
|
| > _With unprofitable routes mounting, Concorde was going
| through rough times in the early 1980s. At this point,
| British Airways made a move that potentially saved supersonic
| travel. In 1981, British Airways managing director Sir John
| King managed to purchase the Concorde fleet from the British
| Government outright for PS16.5 million plus the first year's
| profits. Following the purchase, British Airways increased
| fares, bringing Concorde routes closer to profitability. With
| the fleet now owned outright, British Airways added
| additional routes._
|
| [0] https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-
| airways
| mshook wrote:
| For AF, my understanding (and my source actually worked
| that side of the business) is Concorde got profitable with
| special flights (aka people renting the plane to travel the
| world) not from just your regular scheduled flights.
|
| But keep in mind neither BA nor AF really paid for their
| fleet...
| nradov wrote:
| LHR is capacity constrained right now so they don't have slots
| to add more flights. Hopefully the runway expansion will be
| finished by the time Boom airliners are actually in service.
| froidpink wrote:
| That is some wishful thinking there
| cjrp wrote:
| American would swap this in for a plane which is using an
| existing takeoff/landing slot. Heathrow is also passenger-
| capacity-constrained right now, but that's more to do with
| understaffing.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > American would swap this in for a plane which is using an
| existing takeoff/landing slot
|
| Have to be charging a great deal to the small number of
| passengers for it to be worth swapping in to a fully loaded
| 777 spot
| cjrp wrote:
| Very true; I think the Overture is meant to be 50-55
| seats? If so that's basically just the First/Business
| cabin of an American 777-300. If each of those 55 seats
| are paying a premium on top of sub-sonic business class,
| maybe that's enough to "lose" the remaining ~240 seats.
|
| Edit: Apparently Overture is 65-88 seats depending on
| configuration.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all
| economy/premium economy in the 777 and you'd come out
| even in the number of seat miles available.
|
| You could also upgrade a couple of the 777-200 or 787
| routes to a 777-300 to get more seat miles to offset
| those lost to loosing a slot to a smaller aircraft.
| gsnedders wrote:
| > Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all
| economy/premium economy in the 777 and you'd come out
| even in the number of seat miles available.
|
| That's still two aircraft instead of one, which means
| acquiring another slot.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Oooohhhh. Yeah that wasn't super clear.
|
| American already has several slots into LHR. I counted 24
| arrivals into LHR tomorrow.
|
| One 777 all economy plus one Boom aircraft all business
| is roughly equal in seat miles to 2x 777 (first +
| business + premium economy + economy).
|
| An upstart airline would need to acquire a slot to get a
| new aircraft into LHR. However American could add a super
| sonic aircraft to its service and still maintain the
| number of the seats it has going in. Yes, it would have
| to take one aircraft out, but there are enough pax that
| will be connecting and can be sold a different routing
| that it can use flexibility with seat configuration to
| not be limited by slots.
|
| For American, a bigger factor is probably what kind of
| seats they can sell. For instance, DFW->LHR has a 75%
| load factor tomorrow for first class but a 68% load
| factor for economy class. However, later in the week
| economy has a higher load factor.
|
| Those first class seats are a lot more profitable than an
| economy. Adding first class seats while taking away
| economy seats is profitable if you can fill the first
| seats.
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| LHR is not the only airport in London.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> LHR is not the only airport in London._
|
| No, but it's the only airport in London that the big US
| legacy carriers - American, Delta, and United - fly to.
| cjrp wrote:
| Connections are important. Also runway length; Heathrow,
| Gatwick and Stansted are probably the only ones long
| enough.
| atdrummond wrote:
| It would truly be a game changer if this could fly out of
| LCY. A faster BA1 has always been my dream flight.
| robjan wrote:
| A few years ago BA specifically excluded the idea of supersonic
| travel because you can provide a much more comfortable sleeper
| service at a similar price while making more profit.
| testing654321 wrote:
| this is wild
| panick21_ wrote:
| Mhh, whenever I heard about them, I looking at their current
| successes. Did they not promise to launch a sub-scale supersonic
| plane to test out everything? It has still not flown unless I
| have missed something.
|
| So why should I trust that their main airliner is anywhere even
| close to on-time.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I'm reminded of all the airline announcements at the end of the
| 60s announcing agreed purchases of Concorde and Boeing 2707.
| upupandup wrote:
| and guess what happened at that time too: capital suddenly got
| very expensive and companies went under.
|
| this is the worst possible time for launch and the name will be
| quite poetic
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I'm surprised by this... I'd imagine that all of the BS we've
| added to airport procedures (under the guises of "security",
| mostly), would sort of help negate the typical "Concorde" case.
| In a universe where you still need to show up umpteen hours early
| for check-in, baggage, security, does having a plane that may cut
| a fraction of the time of the trip really seem compelling?
| vimy wrote:
| Seems more alluring as a private jet.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| THAT would make tons of sense to me... here the flight is a
| greater share of the overall flight time, so cutting into
| that yields a greater percentage reduction on overall travel
| time, which is presumably the variable you'd want to most
| affect.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Getting from curb-to-gate today is easier and faster than it
| was pre-9/11.
|
| That's just domestic. For international travel it has been a
| literal exponential decrease in hassle.
|
| Of course, this all depends on whether or not the airport you
| use (and it is 100% dependent on the airport itself) has
| deployed all of the automated systems being used to lower
| terminal transit times.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| IMHO a better title would have been:
|
| "American Airlines to buy 20 Overture aircraft from Boom
| Supersonic"
|
| When reading the original title, I had the impression that the
| company was going to be acquired by AA.
|
| Instead, it's "just" an order of 20 aircrafts.
|
| Note that this is not a new move by Boom, they played this card
| when raising money when they pitched at YC demo day, and they're
| doing it again. The problem I have with this is the following:
|
| > agreement to purchase up to 20 Overture aircraft, with an
| option for an additional 40. American has paid a non-refundable
| deposit on the initial 20 aircraft
|
| It's "up to 20", and not "20", and there is a non-disclosed non-
| refundable deposit. If it's a, say, $10,000 per aircraft, total
| of $200,000 (ouch, should I say... up to $200,000?), it's a just
| a cheaper ad for AA, and ammo for the CEO when the board asks
| "where are you innovating?".
|
| Good luck to Boom, but I am unconvinced this is a viable company
| and a viable business.
| balaji1 wrote:
| Totally agree about the wording of the title comment and other
| commenters in this thread.
|
| But "Boom Supersonic is transforming air travel with Overture,
| the world's fastest airliner, optimized for speed, safety, and
| sustainability. Serving both civil and government markets,
| Overture will fly at twice the speed of today's airliners and
| is designed to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
| Overture's order book, including purchases and options from
| American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines stands
| at 130 aircraft. Boom is working with Northrop Grumman for
| government and defense applications of Overture. Suppliers and
| partners collaborating with Boom on the Overture program
| include Collins Aerospace, Eaton, Safran Landing Systems,
| Rolls-Royce, the United States Air Force, American Express,
| Climeworks, and AWS."
|
| This^ is significant support they already have. So they could
| operate for 10+ years, which seems like they will (even if they
| are just in R&D and burning cash). In a way, it is viable to
| the employees and suppliers, if they get paid for such a long
| time haha.
| Rackedup wrote:
| > When reading the original title, I had the impression that
| the company was going to be acquired by AA.
|
| Same... at least they should put an S to aircraft... but then
| again maybe they hit the strict character limit...
| metadat wrote:
| The plural of aircraft is still "aircraft".
| tshaddox wrote:
| Could go with "airplanes" which has a more conventional
| plural form and is much simpler and clearer in cases like
| this where we know full well what specific type of aircraft
| we're talking about.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Or aeroplanes!
| Rackedup wrote:
| sometimes I don't get English...
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| The grammar is easier then German
| tankenmate wrote:
| It's an artefact of where English gets the word "craft"
| from. In general in English the plural of uncountable
| things is the same as the singular. For example, the
| plural of sugar is sugar (sugars in English implies a
| group of different types of sugar). The word craft comes
| to English from Germanic (kraft). The meanings of these
| two words (English craft vs German kraft) diverged over
| time. In English the word has a meaning similar to that
| which is made or the manner in which it is made. Whereas
| in German it means the means by which something is made
| (i.e. power, in both the physics and non-physics sense).
| For example Kraftwerk in German means power station.
|
| Since the "means by which" is uncountable (craft) then
| the plural should be the same as the singular; i.e. one
| craft, many craft. This also applies in English to older
| agglutinates like aircraft. Newer agglutinates (for
| example laptop) are far less likely to follow this rule;
| one laptop, many laptops.
|
| English, due to its muddled heritage and well intentioned
| but half informed linguists over the years, is a very
| messy language.
| 7952 wrote:
| I wonder how the craft word was adapted to mean the boat
| object.
|
| I think for river travel it was common to build a
| boat/raft to make a journey and then break it up at the
| destination. In that context maybe the object of the boat
| was secondary to the act of making the boat. And at some
| point boats became more personified and thought of as
| things in their own right.
| rawling wrote:
| A couple other suggestions, although still not certain:
|
| > Use for "small boat" is first recorded 1670s, probably
| from a phrase similar to "vessels of small craft" and
| referring either to the trade they did or the seamanship
| they required, or perhaps it preserves the word in its
| original sense of "power."
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/craft?ref=etymonline_cros
| sre...
|
| I'd never even though about this, so thanks for that.
| tankenmate wrote:
| I suspect it was a shortening of watercraft. According to
| wiktionary the use of the word for water vessels was
| originally used for smaller loading craft. So using the
| older Germanic meaning of "by means of", the phrase "it
| got here by watercraft" could be translated as "it got
| here by means of water". One could assume that it
| wouldn't take much for the word to go from preposition to
| noun; especially in the context of agglutinates and
| abbreviations.
|
| The English word "boat" comes directly from German; "das
| Boot".
| solveit wrote:
| Putting "up to 20" in the title would work.
| [deleted]
| trollied wrote:
| > Good luck to Boom, but I am unconvinced this is a viable
| company and a viable business.
|
| Same. I think their timelines are too aggressive. I want to be
| proved wrong though!
| foobarqux wrote:
| Yes these are "non-binding" commitments that are just
| marketing. Very deceptive but standard practice in aerospace.
| For example only a fraction of the Concordes that were
| committed in this way were actually purchased.
|
| Until the plane is actually flying in the air you should just
| treat any announcements as misleading (they announced that
| their test airframe was ready, what, 3-4 years ago?).
| beambot wrote:
| It's not really deceptive, it's just that many people have a
| poor understanding of the accounting difference between LOIs,
| contractual bookings, and recognized revenue. These LOIs
| would not appear on an income statement, balance sheet or
| P&L... and no one ever suggested otherwise. It's just one
| signal (of many) that indicate market demand for high-capex
| products with long lead times.
| jeanlou wrote:
| Same here, regarding the misperception of Boom being acquired
| by AA
| pen2l wrote:
| I thought the same.
|
| But, it's an interesting thought, and in line with a very
| interesting thread that kragen brought to my attention:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32009925
|
| FedEx likes to buy out Boeing facilities so that they're not
| "completely reliant" on Boeing for anything, see
| https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news/102874-fedex-to-take...
| "Air cargo carrier FedEx Express (FX, Memphis Int'l) is to take
| over the lease of Boeing's Dreamlifter Operations Centre at
| Paine Field, Everett, quashing any hopes of a return of the
| B787 Dreamliner production to Washington State."
|
| I wonder why more airlines don't choose to do similar things.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The deposit could be $1 for all we know and fully cancelable
| with no commitment to buy or deploy. The press release is
| basically fluff.
| HPsquared wrote:
| How is the fuel efficiency of these? They go faster, but I assume
| they would also fly higher where the air is thinner. Does it
| cancel out?
| akmarinov wrote:
| Adding to the supersonic questions - how will they deal with
| the sonic booms? I assume they're still banned over land, which
| significantly adds to travel time?
| rflrob wrote:
| The routes they mentioned in the press release (NYC-LHR, LAX-
| Hawaii) are almost entirely over water.
| skellera wrote:
| As the press release says, it's specifically designed to
| replace over water routes. There are many international
| routes (some domestic, like Hawaii) that this can handle. So
| it won't be doing anything like LA->NY.
| cjrp wrote:
| I wonder how noisy they are even sub-sonic. Concorde was so
| loud on takeoff and approach, you'd stop and look up even
| living ~20 miles away from Heathrow. If you tried to
| introduce that now, there's no way would it be accepted.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Old jet engines are super noisy. Modern jet engines are
| much much quieter.
| solardev wrote:
| What makes the newer engines so much quieter?
| HPsquared wrote:
| They have larger fan blades, for one. That means they
| move a large volume of air relatively slowly, instead of
| a small volume of air moving quickly.
|
| Consider the difference between a large shop fan, and a
| small high pressure compressed air nozzle commonly used
| in workshops for cleaning, with both sized to give the
| same "reaction force" (i.e. the same thrust). The high-
| pressure nozzle makes much more noise.
| chasil wrote:
| The metallurgy of the fan blades has also vastly
| improved.
|
| Monocrystaline fan blades have very different material
| properties from the polycrystaline blades that (I am
| guessing) were used on Concorde.
|
| https://www.americanscientist.org/article/each-blade-a-
| singl...
| gsnedders wrote:
| Plus a significant impact of Concorde was the (very
| turbulent) flow from the reheat; from memory it's not
| really dissimilar to many modern military aircraft with
| reheat today.
|
| They'll get a fair gain from just not having reheat, yet
| alone the rest of the benefit of decades of aerodynamic
| design around engine exhaust flows.
| nradov wrote:
| They will deal with the sonic booms the same way that
| Condorde did: by flying over water.
| peteri wrote:
| For concorde the numbers are quite different. Stealing from
| truly epic concorde thread on pprune.
|
| https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...
|
| At the beginning of the take off roll, each engine would be
| burning around 21 tonnes/hour.
|
| Anyway, back to some figues; at Mach 2, 50,000', the typical
| fuel burn per engine would be around 5 tonnes/hour, falling to
| around 4.2 tonnes/hour at 60,000'
| zymhan wrote:
| Since no engine for it exists yet, no one knows.
| skellera wrote:
| If Boom is able to come out with a new supersonic aircraft, is it
| possible for a startup to compete with Boeing or Airbus in
| subsonic aircraft? Either coming up with a new design or another
| innovation that can compete. Or, are those companies pretty much
| set with impassable moats?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Unless Boeing or Airbus screw up financially, which is almost
| impossible, the duopoly is set in stone. It will take massive
| government backing to change that, Airbus itself is proof of
| that. The only parties that _do_ challenge the big two on
| single aile jets are Bombardier and Embraer, one of which was
| bought by Airbus and one which was almost bought by Boeing.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I disagree. The disruption can happen as many routes
| transition to electric. Boeing and Airbus might wait for to
| long.
|
| There are already new companies doing short-distance electric
| passenger flight. These companies could well scale to longer
| distance flights.
|
| You could also imagine a company like Tesla getting in that
| business as well.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There are no electric jet operated commercially, and wont
| be until at least 2026. And those that are in development
| are meant for distances around 100-200 km or strait up
| urban mobility. The latter of which falls squarely into the
| helicopter segment.
|
| And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace,
| companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard. Really
| hard, it is with the potential exception of life science
| the most regulated industry on earth. None of the
| automotive experience (close to none, but you get the
| point) translate into an aerospace environment. And even
| if, we are still looking at billions of development cost
| for small aircraft to be used commercialy, in the range of
| ten billion plus for commercial airliners.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > There are no electric jet operated commercially, and
| wont be until at least 2026.
|
| Yeah, I wasn't making any time prediction, but big
| technology changes can break established industry
| patterns.
|
| > The latter of which falls squarely into the helicopter
| segment.
|
| There are lots of markets in the past that flew these
| kind of routes and with electric other can again and more
| routes can be added because of the changed economics.
| Helicopters are unsafe and have low capacity, I don't
| really think they are actually competing in the same
| space.
|
| They address something different then something like the
| Heart Aerospace ES-19. That plane is 400km, 19 seater
| designed to launch in 2026.
|
| And that is with incredibly conservative choices,
| conservative air-frame, conservative batteries and so on.
|
| There is a huge amount of potential for increasing the
| range left once you fully optimize every aspect of the
| plane around electric.
|
| > And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace,
| companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard.
|
| I picked Tesla for a reason. Tesla works with SpaceX.
| Those two companies already work together on many fronts.
| Tesla battery packs and electric motors in SpaceX
| vehicles. They have shared research divisions in material
| science and likely other things. Musk has been talking
| about electric plans for decades, its pretty clear that
| he wants to develop them and has mentioned before that
| between Tesla and SpaceX he has the ingredients. Its just
| that there is so much more scaling to do in automotive
| and trucking that it doesn't yet make sense to invest the
| resources.
|
| Lets just be real, Tesla knows much more about electric
| motors and batteries then companies like Heart Aerospace,
| or existing companies like Boeing/Airbus. Yes the
| industry is regulated more and certifications are more
| strict, but a company that produces 3+ million electric
| motors a year (more large electric motors then anybody
| else in the world) fully vertically integrated, can
| manage to match companies like Heart or Airbus when
| developing battery packs and electric motors and get them
| certified and produced.
|
| SpaceX speaks for itself, they outperform Boeing to an
| almost embracing degree in space, see Crew Dragon
| compared to Starliner. I am confident that if they were
| to work on an airplane they could do it. They had to do a
| huge amount of certification work for DoD, for NASA, they
| know how to work with regulators and the get hardware
| certified.
|
| Now of course, it would not be easy and success in
| aerospace is never guaranteed. But the ingredients are
| there and the is little question they could raise the
| required funding. I think that would be a better thing to
| focus on then robots to be honest.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right.
|
| At this point a new aircraft program is easily $15B+ of
| development. That kind of money is hard to come by for a new
| aviation company.
|
| China, Russia, and Japan have all tried breaking into the
| market as well without much success.
| sonthonax wrote:
| Why aren't the Chinese and Russians successful at building
| airliners? International politics aside, they have workable
| products, so why can't they break into the duopoly.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Workable != competitive, and in an industry as cutthroat
| in aviation airlines want the absolute best in fuel
| efficiency and reliability to undercut their competitors
| by $5.
|
| There are other commercial aircraft manufacturers but
| essentially in each size segment you will only see two
| players. Embraer doesn't make any direct competitors with
| Airbus or Boeing, as an example.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Embraer jets got rebranded as A220s not that long ago,
| great planes that took over the market that served by
| short 737s and A319/18s. No competition for the bigger
| planes, that is true.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The A220s were Bombardier.
|
| Them selling out to Airbus had more to do with general
| issues at the parent conglomerate (they also exited
| trains and snowmobiles to raise cash). But they still
| make corporate jets.
| octodog wrote:
| Duopoly markets can be surprisingly efficient in some
| circumstances, so it may not be profitable for other
| firms to enter the market.
|
| https://inomics.com/terms/bertrand-competition-1504578
| jseliger wrote:
| There is an excellent book on this subject:
| https://www.amazon.com/China-Airborne-James-
| Fallows/dp/14000...
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > they have workable products
|
| Not so, not for Russia anyway:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100
| hef19898 wrote:
| And that was a very promising program.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think there is some questions of them being able to scale up
| the production.
|
| But Boeing and Airbus aren't invisible if you are offering a
| product they don't sell. See A220 with somewhere 220+ units
| sold. It did end up in hands of Airbus, but it was effort by
| Bombardier.
| upupandup wrote:
| No. There is no way they can compete with say Airbus's quality
| and build quality. If they think people are gonna trust their
| lives to a startup company kept afloat by current interest
| rates over Airbus, I got a bridge to sell you.
|
| If supersonic travel was in demand post-pandemic and rising
| inflation, interest rates, Airbus would've been all over it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Eh, the aircraft manufacturers fuck up market projection too.
|
| Boeing has almost entirely ceded replacement of its own 757
| and 767 to Airbus since it offers nothing in that midsize
| range today. Airbus fucked up thinking that the A380 was
| going to make money, and it took them a while to get the A350
| right despite pressure from airlines to actually compete with
| the B787.
| makz wrote:
| And how does it align with agenda 2030 and the goal to reduce
| carbon emissions?
| pythonguython wrote:
| Aviation makes up a rather small portion of transportation
| emissions. I don't think there is much point in focusing on
| clean air travel when cars and trucks produce such a massive
| amount of carbon emissions in comparison.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I wonder if a transatlantic hop on this, with electric flight on
| either end can work to replace direct transatlantic flights while
| being faster and greener? Probably all depends on the
| switchovers.
| exyi wrote:
| This will be hardly greener than taking a regular aircraft.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It depends really. About half the GHG impact of flights is
| non carbon.
|
| Is this better or worse on that account? I have no idea. But
| it potentially could be substantially different either way.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Boom is quite the name for such a speculative business. What's
| next, Bubble Airships Inc? (Luxury cruises, the slow route). They
| could also have a side business in submarine expeditions.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I'll offer Iceberg Cruise Ships Inc. free of charge.
| seydor wrote:
| I thought it was a reference to the supersonic boom, although
| supposedly their planes will not have that loud noise. But as
| an airplane name it's very bad, nobody wants to go boom boom
| paxys wrote:
| They agreed to purchase 20 aircraft, not the company itself. The
| title is a bit ambiguous.
| spatulon wrote:
| Sorry, I had to reword and shorten the headline from the linked
| page to fit within HN's title length limit.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Quite misleading - not that you did it intentionally, but the
| title "reads" as AA acquires the company, not an order for 20
| aircrafts.
|
| Better title - and still within HN limits - would have been:
|
| "American Airlines to buy 20 Overture aircraft from Boom
| Supersonic"
| s0rce wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying I was confused why an airline was getting
| into the airliner business, this makes much more sense.
| balderdash wrote:
| Yeah should say places order for boom aircraft
| aliswe wrote:
| Agreed
| namirez wrote:
| I was speaking with one the top managers of Airbus and asked him
| about Boom Supersonic and the Overture. He was skeptical of the
| idea mostly because of fuel consumption. He said based on their
| research, the future of flight is slower not faster. Open fan,
| hydrogen, and electrical planes all point to a slower and more
| efficient aviation.
| galgot wrote:
| So they went from scaled down Concorde configuration :
|
| https://www.airway.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Boom_Ov...
|
| to a very scaled down Boeing 2707-300 configuration :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707
|
| (that tiny fin tho...). While reducing cruise speed to 1.7 mach.
| I see no visible changes to deal with the sonic booms problem. So
| operation would be like Concorde I suppose, subsonic (or hi-
| subsonic) over land and Supersonic over ocean only. Unless the
| super-rich manage the regulation to change.
|
| EDIT : ah yes :) "2x FASTER OVER WATER" and "20% FASTER OVER
| LAND"...
|
| Also : 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...
| jandrese wrote:
| And they still have not solved the problem that ultimately sunk
| the Concorde. Fuel costs made it unprofitable to operate
| whenever the price of oil went up.
|
| The small niche of customers willing to pay a significant
| premium in order to save some travel hours is not big enough to
| sustain an entire industry of specialized mechanics, parts
| suppliers, pilots, etc... Basically you need a critical mass of
| people riding these aircraft every year before the relatively
| high fixed costs eat you alive, and it's very hard to get a lot
| of people to buy into a high priced luxury service.
| standardUser wrote:
| Sounds like a 1970's mindset that is wildly underestimating
| how much air travel has changed and how many more hundreds of
| millions of people can now afford semi-frequent air travel,
| with hundreds millions more in the pipeline.
| Fomite wrote:
| Most of whom have demonstrated, time and time again, that
| price is the primary factor by which they decide who to fly
| with.
| standardUser wrote:
| Business travel, which continues to explode between the
| West and Asia, is far less price sensitive and far more
| time sensitive. And of course the number of wealthy air
| travelers continues to increase rapidly as well.
|
| Plus, it's just f*cking exhausting to fly 10-18 hours, so
| people may well be willing to spend more on those extra-
| long-haul flights just to spare their mind and body. I
| don't believe any commercial supersonic jets were even
| able to fly trans-Pacific in the past, and ties between
| those regions were a tiny fraction of what they are today
| anyway. Faster trans-Pacific transport simply seems
| inevitable.
| thombat wrote:
| Agreed - if it could stroll right across the Pacific it
| would be compelling. But unfortunately Boom needs to
| stretch its legs a further 25% to manage LAX - China, or
| about 10% for Tokyo. An A350 takes about 9 hours to fly
| as far as Boom's range, which is a longish but not
| utterly brutal flight.
| delisam wrote:
| Didn't the founder say he envisions supersonic tickets to be
| $100? I can't even buy any subsonic tix for less than $120.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I can envision teleportation.
| wmeredith wrote:
| This is hilarious, if true. I flew on a shitty subsonic
| flight from the midwest to Utah earlier this year and it
| was $450/ticket when I bought them 6 months out.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I flew on a shitty subsonic flight from the midwest to
| Utah earlier this year and it was $450 /ticket when I
| bought them 6 months out._
|
| I flew 2,000 miles between the Midwest and the west coast
| last week. $109 each way, with checked baggage, booked
| three weeks out.
|
| I like Utah, but let's not pretend that your flight (or
| mine) is representative of anything.
| dghughes wrote:
| Here in south-eastern Canada it used to cost $800 to fly
| 180km to fly from my town to Halifax. Now I see it's only
| around $300 to $600.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> Miami to London in just under five hours
|
| I know I would pay a premium for this experience. Simply
| because it fits into my imagined jet set lifestyle
| phenomenally well. Maybe once every two years for a special
| occasion or treat ;)
|
| I also think the economically limiting term is still the
| turbine blades. Lifetimes for commercial service turbines run
| 100k+ hours. Supersonic is maybe 1/10 that. And have higher
| rates of oxidation, cavitation, catastrophic fatigue, etc. We
| need a new Alphafold! For phase stability of alloys
| exhibiting high strain resistance at high temps and fast
| cycles...
| acchow wrote:
| I wonder how much larger the population of people is today
| (vs Concorde's era) that are willing to pay for these
| supersonic ticket prices. 3x? 10x?
| _ph_ wrote:
| This could be a very important enabler. As you can see in
| other "luxus" industries, the amount of affluent people on
| this planet has ballooned. I don't know any numbers, but I
| got the impression that the private airplane industry had a
| strong growth in recent years. And flying supersonic with
| an airline for sure is way cheaper than any private flight.
| runarberg wrote:
| Will that also be the case if they actually have to pay
| for the carbon they emit in the process?
|
| Currently airline passengers don't have to pay for their
| carbon emissions, but I doubt that's gonna last for much
| longer (we are in an emergency after all). And I've seen
| elsewhere in this thread that the emissions are likely
| gonna be somewhere between 5x and 10x of normal sub-sonic
| flights. The price of this extra carbon emission will
| probably be something that even affluent passengers will
| want to skip.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Good question. Currently fuel for international flights
| isn't taxed at all, as far as I know. Which explains the
| popularity of flying. Fuel for cars costs several times
| more, at least here in Europe.
|
| Starting to tax airplane fuel would be an important step
| towards reducing the CO2 output. Possibly that would
| trigger a switch to synthetic and carbon neutral fuels.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I wonder how much larger the population of people is today
| (vs Concorde 's era) that are willing to pay for these
| supersonic ticket prices. 3x? 10x?_
|
| At least.
|
| Even if you think price is a barrier, think about how many
| more millionaires and billionaires there are in America and
| Europe today than there were just 20 years ago.
|
| Tack on our society's rediscovered fascination with
| conspicuous consumption ("influencers"), and I don't think
| filling seats will be the problem today that it once was.
| andruby wrote:
| I'm not sure that it would even be larger now than before.
|
| Subsonic flight has become much more efficient, cheaper and
| when paying for higher class, more comfortable. This is one
| of the reasons often mentioned for the economic demise of
| the concorde. The audience willing to pay $6000 on a
| concorde ticket, could now spend $4000 on first class
| subsonic with a seat that fully reclines into a bed. They
| can fly a little longer at night but sleep the whole
| journey.
|
| Wendover did a good economic analysis of the concorde:
| https://youtu.be/n1QEj09Pe6k
| ghaff wrote:
| The number of people who will pay--or can make their
| companies pay--$500+/hour for a handful of saved hours on
| a flight which mostly won't go into incremental
| productive work is miniscule. Most business travelers
| aren't international lawyers or consultants flying across
| the Atlantic for a quick get together. But pay a bit more
| to fly a bit more comfortably to be more rested/as a perk
| and maybe even save on a hotel room night? Quite a few
| people, even if not the typical traveler.
| Retric wrote:
| They seem to have dramatically reduced fuel consumption, but
| fuel wasn't the issue for the concord the limited number of
| viable routes where.
|
| Going from the Concrods 3550nm range to 4250nm should help
| with that as it opens up several new routes and longer routes
| see a more significant drop in travel times.
| berkut wrote:
| From what I've read, the Concordes had preferential landing
| treatment on westbound flights into JFK and Dulles, due to
| their shortage of fuel, and the controllers would often
| allow them to land before other planes that had been
| queuing for a while. (They used a separate controller radio
| frequency apparently for the initial request, and then
| switched to using the main frequency).
| galgot wrote:
| Still there are not much other routes you can go supersonic
| in one flight but trans-atlantic, which Concorde could do.
| Trans-Pacific which could have been the big money making
| route, like LAX to Tokyo, you need to be able to do 4737
| nm... which makes the 4250 nm just short to make it. They
| would face the same problem the Boeing 2707 team had (or
| even Lockheed with the L-2000 project), no matter how they
| tried, too short range for trans-pacific in one Hop. So
| they would have had to make a stop to Hawai, but then
| what's the point if you can take first class in a B777 and
| make the journey shorter in one subsonic flight. All other
| routes would be over land, and there again you can't go
| supersonic (for time being).
| [deleted]
| fedorareis wrote:
| Seattle to Tokyo is only 4144nm so that might be a viable
| route especially for routes that would have already had a
| layover in LAX and/or Tokyo.
| thombat wrote:
| In part that will depend upon its ETOPS capabilities,
| i.e. how far it can be trusted to fly after an engine
| fails. The Great Circle mapper is fun for playing "what
| if" games with potential routes: e.g. here's the direct
| Seattle-Tokyo routing with dark shading showing parts
| where flying for 60 mins at 410 knots wouldn't reach an
| airport. So if that was the ETOPS performance for a Boom
| aircraft (and I've no idea; I just picked a B777 as an
| example) then the route would have pass a little closer
| to Alaska and Sakhalin to keep the possibility of a safe
| diversion at all times, and that in turn might make the
| route too long.
|
| http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=KSEA-
| RJAA&MS=wls&DU=mi&E=60&EV=...
| jandrese wrote:
| Fuel prices were absolutely an issue for Concorde. BA
| struggled immensely with the Arab oil embargo and the per-
| seat cost for the Concorde shot up into the stratosphere
| and ticket sales collapsed.
| bogomipz wrote:
| The Arab Oil Embargo was 1973-1974 and the Concord didn't
| go into commercial service until 1976. While it sounds
| like the oil crisis had an effect on airlines placing
| Concord orders it didn't overlap with the commercial
| service being offered to the public. See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
| Retric wrote:
| The oil embargo hit the entire industry hard, but
| Concorde continued operation into 2003. Over time as
| other aircraft became more efficient the efficiency gap
| grew much larger but it was still profitable up to Air
| France Flight 4590.
| jandrese wrote:
| Concorde survived on government subsidies, especially
| with the R&D costs, but also the maintenance chain. It
| was a point of national pride for the UK and France, but
| also a money pit for both countries.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Concorde survived on government subsidies, especially
| with the R&D costs, but also the maintenance chain.
|
| Yes, and this was mostly necessary because of the small
| unit counts and small number of routes, not because of
| fuel costs (though the latter certainly _did not help_.
|
| Both could be significantly better with Boom: more
| routes, and lower fuel costs.
| [deleted]
| 0000011111 wrote:
| We can easily model this in a sheet. Like this one:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JhvGd6iVWNweMM-
| PYk3z...
|
| At todays Jet 1 A US fuel price of $3.07 per gallon it
| would cost $108k to fill the Concord. Which holds 120
| passengers. That comes out to a cost of $900 per person
| passenger on a full fight.
|
| If the cost of fuel were double like a few months ago
| then that cost would be $1,800 per flight.
|
| Compared to a Boeing 737 which has a fuel cost of ~24k at
| max capacity of 7,878 gallons at todays prices. A
| passenger limit of 177 and a fuel cost as low as $136.64
| per passenger on a full fight.
| Retric wrote:
| Meanwhile a one way ticket cost US$975 in 1977 or
| inflation adjusted about 4,700$ today. Which increased
| faster than inflation so by mid 90's your talking around
| 6,000$ which is something like 12,000$ today.
|
| Thus fuel while expensive wasn't a deal killer over most
| of it's history as long as they could keep most seats
| filled.
| notahacker wrote:
| The "as long as they could keep most seats filled" was a
| deal killer though.
|
| There was enough demand for one return flight a day
| carrying a small proportion of the overall passengers on
| the immensely-popular with wealthy people JFK-LHR and
| JFK-CDG routes. That wasn't enough to utilise the 14
| production aircraft properly, never mind enough demand
| for it to have been viable as an airframe programme ...
| Retric wrote:
| They both also used it for private charters which was
| apparently quite a profitable business. Anyway, the
| exclusivity was presumably more profitable than simply
| maximizing occupancy.
|
| That said, boom is building a significantly smaller
| aircraft which should again open up more possible routes.
| mbg721 wrote:
| "We are beginning our ascent, and thank you for flying BOOM!,"
| awb wrote:
| It's the manufacturer's name, not the airline. No one says
| "Thank you for flying Airbus". They would still say "Thank you
| for flying American Airlines".
| mbg721 wrote:
| It's better than saying "AA". I was going someplace on the
| double-A highway and needed directions, so I plugged it into
| Google Maps and got to hear about the "AAAAAHHH!!!!!" Highway
| the entire time.
| bell-cot wrote:
| From Boom's Wikipedia page, they seem to have built _zero_
| airplanes which even attempted to take off. That includes their 1
| /3 scale "technology demonstrator" test plane - which was
| supposed to fly back in 2017.
|
| I'll guess that American's "non-refundable deposit" for the first
| 20 Boom aircraft was pretty small, and came out of American's
| marketing budget. Or was a negotiating tactic, to help American
| get a better price from some real aircraft manufacturer.
| zahma wrote:
| On the heels of a news headline saying they've cancelled
| another 30,000 flights through November, I'd bet you're on to
| something.
|
| https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/american-airlines-to-cu...
| dkfkdkckdjzj wrote:
| sktrdie wrote:
| Do we really need to go somewhere so quickly? There needs to be a
| line somewhere where "getting to the other side of the planet in
| less than 12 hours is unsustainable and environmentally
| horrible".
|
| I've learned to appreciate slow-travel using trains and have been
| a supporter of electric planes for reaching further places.
| newsclues wrote:
| Some people want to live and work in different places.
|
| Rather than high speed rail to get the masses into cities for
| work, we are getting fast planes for the wealthy to work in NYC
| and spend the weekend in European villas.
|
| Makes you scratch your head trying to justify this while
| climate change is encouraging people to eat bugs.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Rather than high speed rail to get the masses into cities
| for work
|
| That wouldn't really work outside of some very specific
| cases. High speed rail (300km/h+) needs some distance to get
| to its cruising speed. Below that it's a waste of money. The
| shortest high-speed rail route i know of is Paris-Reims and
| it takes 40 minutes, which is decent for a commute, depending
| on home/work to train station distance.
| newsclues wrote:
| Those specific cases cover massive numbers of people so why
| aren't they being done? I don't expect HSR everywhere but
| in the dense areas
| mertnesvat wrote:
| I wonder what Elon thinks about this. There was one demo from
| SpaceX about using their rockets for Trips where they can lower
| down transatlantic flights to 20 30 mins (if you have strong sto-
| mach) Or Boring Company focused to hyperloops.
|
| My humble opinion is that it's aviation company without huge
| innovation or disruption of the industry. More like a fast horse
| rather than car.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has
| got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I
| just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71,
| Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built.
| But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on
| to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel
| efficiency and reducing our environmental impact.
|
| There is so much opportunity for innovation in areas of aviation
| where we desperately need to innovate: Getting rid leaded avgas,
| moving away from fossil fuels altogether which includes fields
| like energy storage and electric propulsion, developing an
| efficient trainer to replace the piston lead-gasoline burning
| C172 that is so ubiquitous and makes up much of the 1500 required
| hours for an ATP license. So many opportunities.
|
| Aviation is ripe for innovation. This ain't it.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > Getting rid leaded avgas
|
| Isn't that more chemical engineering? Boom sounds mostly
| mechanical.
|
| > moving away from fossil fuels altogether which includes
| fields like energy storage and electric propulsion
|
| Isn't this mostly battery tech? Seems like a stretch for these
| experts to be working on that.
|
| > developing an efficient trainer to replace the piston lead-
| gasoline burning C172 that is so ubiquitous and makes up much
| of the 1500 required hours for an ATP license.
|
| At least this sounds like something in their wheelhouse, but
| needless to say, there's no money in that.
|
| Boom is developing a plane that has demand. Simple as that. Not
| everyone needs to try to save the world.
| Symbiote wrote:
| GP is criticizing a company just doing something for the
| money without concern for the environment, which is a very
| reasonable criticism.
| [deleted]
| mpweiher wrote:
| In the GA segment, the Pipistrel Panthera is really
| interesting.
|
| With the currently available conventional engine, it vastly
| outperforms the Cessnas and Cirruses, AFAICT.
|
| So with the hybrid and pure electric options in development
| (these were planned from the start, so the plane is designed
| for them), it is still competitive.
|
| https://www.pipistrel-aircraft.com/products/general-aviation...
|
| (Not affiliated or associated in any way, just a fan of
| aviation innovation)
| chinathrow wrote:
| Pipistrel is now owned (as is Cessna) by Textron.
| foo92691 wrote:
| Agreed. Boom claims they will be "sustainable" because they are
| going to invent some kind of synthetic biofuel.
|
| Wait, it looks like I either misremembered that claim, or they
| have backed away from it:
|
| > "Overture's fleet _will be able to_ run on 100% sustainable
| aviation fuels. "
|
| https://boomsupersonic.com/sustainability
|
| Color me skeptical. Making existing aviation more climate-
| friendly would be a much more worthy goal than this ridiculous
| supersonic vanity project.
| beambot wrote:
| It's legit. Take a look at Prometheus Fuels. More details:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/former-playwright-
| ai...
| humanistbot wrote:
| Meanwhile, my data center has been fully prepared to run on
| electricity supplied from cold fusion reactors for years!
| mmaunder wrote:
| Just want to reply to my own post here to add that most people
| don't realize that the Cirrus SR22 is the world's best selling
| single engine piston aircraft and has been for the past 20
| years. And it's wholly owned by the Chinese government. I'm
| aware this is a different market, but I want to illustrate how
| we're losing our lead in some critical areas, while we focus on
| creating solutions looking for a problem.
|
| Incidentally, Boom is 5 minutes from my office here in
| Centennial, Colorado and where I fly out of KAPA. I'd like to
| see innovative US aerospace companies succeed, but I feel like
| these guys are chasing the wrong idea.
| zucked wrote:
| TIL Cirrus was owned by CAIGA - looks like they're also
| building some light bizjets for Cessna...
|
| Neat. Love to watch traffic at KAPA - saw a Walton plane land
| there the other day an hour or so before Condi was named part
| owner of the Broncos.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Third busiest regional in the nation. Super fun to fly in
| and out of and tower and ground do a spectacular job!
| zokier wrote:
| > I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some
| critical areas
|
| How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area?
|
| edit: I do note that according to 2019 report, North American
| companies had >60% global marketshare in both turboprops and
| business jets in terms of units shipped
| S201 wrote:
| > How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area?
|
| Where do you think airline pilots come from? New pilots
| learn to fly in single-engine piston planes. And then again
| as flight instructors and commercial (non-ATP) pilots while
| building time to get their ATP rating and move onto the
| airlines. The continual slow death of GA is only going to
| worse an increasingly dire pilot shortage.
| nradov wrote:
| The pilot shortage (if there really is one) is almost
| entirely the fault of short-sighted airlines and their
| unions; it has little to do with GA manufacturers. If
| airlines really wanted a larger supply of ATP ratings
| then they could simply hire pilot candidates with little
| or no flight time, then pay them to go through training.
| Some large foreign airlines already recruit pilots this
| way.
| S201 wrote:
| I did not say the shortage was created by GA
| manufacturers, I said that GA in general is the start of
| the career progression for airline pilots in the US hence
| it serves a critical function for society. I too thought
| the pilot shortage was a myth until this past summer when
| it became abundantly clear there were not enough pilots
| in the world to deal with the resurgence of travel.
|
| You could also argue that US pilots have superior
| training due to their GA experience as well. The over-
| reliance on automation and lack of stick and rudder
| skills is becoming a liability in those foreign airlines
| that train pilots exclusively in simulators and then
| throw them into the right seat of airliners where they're
| essentially computer operators instead of pilots.
|
| The inability to for an airline pilot to land without
| autopilot is a very real thing:
| https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/russian-jet-crashed-
| captain-c...
|
| Or the ability to fly in IMC conditions without an
| autopilot:
| https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/experienced-crew-
| struggl...
| nradov wrote:
| Those are separate issues. Even if airlines pay for pilot
| training, they could still have most of the syllabus done
| in actual airplanes rather than simulators. The FAA
| generally only allows up to 100 hours of simulator time
| to count towards ATP requirements. The major airlines are
| large enough that they could just buy their own trainer
| aircraft.
| mmaunder wrote:
| 1500 hours per ATP certified pilot.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The idea is to move princelings around the world faster than
| lesser princelings. So long as they have the money they will
| suck up status symbols like a supersonic private jet.
| _hl_ wrote:
| > Getting rid leaded avgas
|
| I was shocked to hear that leaded gasoline is still around, so
| I did a quick search. Turns out most (all?) piston-engine
| driven airplanes still run on leaded gas. Jet airliners don't,
| so I'm not sure if the overall impact is significant, but
| nonetheless shocking to hear that we're still spraying lead
| into the air we breathe.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Some of the new piston planes I believe are rated to use
| unleaded but the problem has been legislation and the FAA
| regarding getting unleaded approved to make it legal and
| ubiquitous
| jandrese wrote:
| The FAA has been dragging their feet on this issue for over
| 20 years now. At first the excuse was that there wasn't a
| viable alternative, but now there is and they are still
| slow rolling it. The administration has a almost
| pathological fear of change.
| S201 wrote:
| Yes, 100LL still has lead in it. And despite what it may seem
| based on skewed figures from those who want to see local
| airports closed so they can build more strip malls and
| condos, there has been a 99.99% reduction of lead pollution
| from gasoline overall since the phase out of automotive
| leaded gas. We're working on getting unleaded avgas, you can
| blame the FAA for it taking so darn long, but it's hardly an
| environmental emergency.
|
| > Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still
| run on leaded gas
|
| Not technically all. There is unleaded avgas although it's
| not yet common and some piston planes are diesel.
| runarberg wrote:
| That was my first thought as well. We are in a climate
| emergency, and currently airlines are not paying for the damage
| they are systematically adding to the catastrophe. I don't see
| a future where this just continues. Either we really mess up
| the climate with all the societal collapse that entails, or we
| make these polluters pay for their damage. In either case there
| is hardly a future for this "innovation".
| jollybean wrote:
| The world is a big place, it can handle 100 or so of these
| fluffing around.
|
| And there actually may be realistic optimization scenarios.
|
| People don't want to have sympathy for 'world leaders' for
| example, but often physical presence is an important thing. And
| they waste so much time.
|
| I don't like my own PM but I'd rather they spent a little more
| to cut his travel time down; his time is _extremely_ expensive.
|
| And this sounds ridiculous at first glance: but even if he
| could literally get reasonable sleep more often. His decisions
| are so impactful, the leverage so much, it matters. And I don't
| even like the guy at all.
|
| That aside the secondary advantages from it might be positive,
| we need R&D that's ahead of the curve.
|
| I'm fine with this as long as everyone isn't flying it all the
| time.
| Ottolay wrote:
| Feels like there is a business case for people willing to pay
| to reduce trip times for trans continental flights.
|
| The problem is that the greenhouse gas impact will be higher
| for a supersonic trip compared to a subsonic one. This is on
| top of the issue that we don't really have a good low carbon
| alternative for longer range air travel (batteries don't have
| anywhere near enough specific energy). The best option we have
| is synthetic jet fuel produced from green electricity.
| Producing jet fuel that way is many times more expensive than
| fossil fuel jet fuel.
| greedo wrote:
| It's not like tickets on these planes are going to be cheap
| anyway. You could double the fuel cost and I doubt that would
| double the ticket cost.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Tone-deaf to many people who care about climate, sure. But what
| about to the executive types who believe they are so important
| that they need to be there in-person, and they get to expense
| these tickets to the corporate account? I think the same
| executives who are trying to kill work-from-home and have an
| inflated view of the benefits of in-person meetings will buy
| these tickets up.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > to get less people around the world faster
|
| What does "less people" mean? You mean Boom is targeting only
| the ultra-rich? That's not their aim. They aim to make
| supersonic flight both possible and affordable.
| foo92691 wrote:
| According to their propaganda, they are going to make jet
| transport cheaper AND faster AND greener.
|
| I see no evidence that this is at all realistic, and a lot of
| evidence to the contrary.
|
| Do they even have a story explaining how their new supersonic
| jet could possibly reduce costs?
| asdfadsfgfdda wrote:
| In theory, a faster airplane is more productive (fly
| passengers farther in the same amount of time). So crew and
| capex costs are lower per mile. Maybe a crew can fly New
| York-London and then fly back, vs a subsonic airliner with
| a crew that flies one way, stays a day for crew rest, then
| flies back.
| zardo wrote:
| Cheaper than the current options for transporting 80 people
| via supersonic aircraft.
| jabl wrote:
| Hmm, yeah. I mean with modern technology it should be
| feasible to create a more cost-effective / greener
| supersonic airliner than Concorde.
|
| But basic physics dictates that supersonic flight requires
| a lot of power, as well as low bypass turbofans. So
| competitive with modern "normal" airliners in terms of cost
| or emissions per seat-km, nope, not gonna happen.
|
| Synthetic jet fuel is a good idea that deserves R&D money
| (if we're gonna keep flying long distance in a carbon
| constrained world I think something like that is going to
| be necessary), but is orthogonal to a supersonic airliner.
| Unsure why they think that bundling synthetic jet fuel
| (itself a high-risk R&D project) with their supersonic jet
| (another high risk R&D project) will do anything but
| increase the risk of failure of the entire project. Well,
| the uncharitable explanation why they're doing it is of
| course greenwashing.
| sofixa wrote:
| No, they're explicitly targeting the business segment,
| basically replacing today's business class on traditional
| airliners with a similarly sized, similarly priced, faster
| alternative.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This isn't going to be applicable to 95+% of aviation, but for
| something like a flight between the US and Australia, e.g. LAX
| to SYD?
|
| Going from a 15h to 8h flight will be _huge_ -- that 's 30h to
| 15h round-trip.
|
| I'm American and visited Australia once, and realized I
| probably never would again, it's just too far. An Australian
| friend of mine here in the US only went home to see his family
| every few years. It just takes _sooo_ long, stuck in an
| economy-class seat.
|
| Supersonic makes a lot of sense not as general-purpose, but for
| long-haul flights between hemispheres. At least until there's
| an economy-price "sleeper car" equivalent accomodation where
| you can actually sleep on flights.
| kubb wrote:
| You don't need to go everywhere, really. Especially not
| halfway round the world for a vacation.
| [deleted]
| jtwaleson wrote:
| I completely agree that right now, this is the right
| mindset. We need to reduce our footprints a lot until we
| are in better shape as a planet. However, I hope that one
| day we'll be able to travel as much as we want in a
| sustainable way. It is a great thing.
| kubb wrote:
| Would be cool, sure.
| s1k3 wrote:
| The number of reasons people want to move around the worl
| are almost innumerable. Just because you don't value it
| doesn't mean others can't.
| kubb wrote:
| The reason for op was getting to his vacation place
| faster, so I guess we were discussing 1 reason.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This reasoning can be used to also say you don't need to go
| anywhere outside of your living area.
|
| Without removing freedom of mobility, the only way we have
| to mitigate environmental costs is through price pressures
| which could be used to fund net neutral technologies.
| kubb wrote:
| If you have everything you need in your living area then
| you don't need to go anywhere else, yeah. In most places
| you can get everything you need within a 200km radius of
| where you live, unless you have very particular needs.
|
| I'm glad you considered all possible ways to mitigate the
| environmental costs of flying. Seems like wasteful
| supersonic jets aren't one of them?
| runarberg wrote:
| The difference between not traveling and a 15 hour flight
| is huge (especially if you have a family those 15 hours
| away). But the difference between 15 hour flight and 8
| hour flight is marginal in that context. And this is
| compounded by the fact that there are some regions which
| are geographically closer then Australia, but take
| significantly longer to travel to because they lack the
| infrastructure for fast and convenient travel. So
| honestly 15 hours is not that bad.
|
| Yes, strictly you don't need to travel anywhere, but we
| should allow people to travel in the most economical way
| feasible. Supersonic jet travel is not that.
|
| If 15 hours in an economy class is too much for you, but
| you can afford a supersonic flight ticket, perhaps you
| should consider upgrading to a business class. Or if you
| don't like that, consider braking the flight up in 2 or 3
| parts sleeping at a nice hotel in between. This is a much
| more climate friendly option then a supersonic flight
| that only saves a few hours of your time.
| nradov wrote:
| The Boom Overture lacks the range to fly non-stop LAX to SYD.
| It would have to make at least two refueling stops (something
| like LAX-HNL-NAN-SYD), so it wouldn't save any time. The crew
| would also need to be changed at least once due to working
| time limits, and it's too small to accommodate crew rest
| facilities.
|
| This airliner is primarily targeted at shorter Atlantic
| routes; if they succeed in that market then they might build
| a larger successor model with the range for Pacific routes.
| malkia wrote:
| Recently I've read an article about plane leasing, and it left me
| realizing that air-companies lease planes from such companies
| (one of biggest ones are Ireland) rather than buying them.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/28/irish-lessors-have-terminate...
|
| "Aircraft Leasing Ireland (ALI), members of which include SMBC
| Aviation Capital, Avolon, Aircastle and AerCap Holdings, which is
| the world's biggest aircraft leasing company, said that all of
| its members have complied fully with the sanctions."
| plegresl wrote:
| Lots of airlines also preordered Concorde:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Sales_efforts
| flybrand wrote:
| > At the time of the first flight the options list contained 74
| options from 16 airlines:[44]
|
| 14 commercial aircraft were delivered of 20 total.
| pinky1417 wrote:
| As someone who has actually flown on the Concorde, I can say that
| I'd gladly endure its tight seats again and empty my wallet in
| exchange for a shorter flight. Heck, if I had the option between
| spending $20,000 for a NY-London roundtrip on an Overture (the
| same price for that route on the Concorde, inflation-adjusted)
| versus spending $20,000 to charter a long-range private jet
| (likely a significant underestimate), I'd go for the Overture in
| most cases.
|
| However, although I'm rooting for any company that's making a
| sincere (as opposed to fraudulent) attempt at bringing back
| supersonic travel, the hardest challenges may still be ahead for
| Boom. The biggest one is the need to find or build a new engine.
| They've recently redesigned the Overture to use four engines
| instead of two, which should ease required engine specs, but
| there's no engine that would meet the reliability, noise, fuel
| consumption, and dimension requirements for a supersonic
| passenger aircraft.
|
| Related to the engines: money. It sounds impressive that boom
| raised at least $150 million, including $60 million from the US
| Air Force (which has the added advantage of creating a new
| customer segment in the military)... until you learn engine
| development alone would require in the ballpark of $6 BILLION of
| capital. Aviation history is rife with examples of amazing,
| innovative aircraft designs that failed because no suitable
| engine was available.
|
| Also, Boom leadership has set some ambitious goals, which makes
| me a bit skeptical. They plan on using sustainable aviation fuel
| (SAF). Great! But now they not only need to create a new engine,
| they need to create a new engine that runs off of a new fuel.
| Additionally, they've set a goal price of $5,000 for a New York
| to London roundtrip whereas Concorde would've cost $20,000 for
| the same route. Heck, I once paid $8,000 for a Boston to Tokyo
| roundtrip business class flight. Nothing wrong with setting such
| a goal (and Boom isn't even the party that sets route prices) and
| it's OK for marketing claims to be a tad optimistic, but this
| tests the limits of credibility.
|
| Lastly, there's the issue of possible routes, which is primarily
| limited by noise constraints. Unlike the Concorde, which needed
| afterburners to produce sufficient thrust for takeoff, Boom is
| going for a no-afterburner design. While this should expand the
| number of airports the Overture can use since afterburners won't
| be blasting the neighborhood, you're still not going to be able
| to fly over land. Boom suggest 500 routes are supersonically
| viable[1], which I'd assume means "pairs of international
| airports separated mostly by water". We might be talking about
| something like 50 actual airports. only a fraction of those
| routes are not just supersonically viable, but _economically_
| viable. Of course, commercial aircraft are designed for
| particular types of routes. An Embraer ERJ-145 regional jet and
| the Boeing 787 long-range wide-body jet fly different routes. I'm
| not expert on this though; maybe 500 routes is plenty for a
| "total addressable market" in the aviation industry,
|
| To bring it all together: my big issues with Boom are, one,
| engine development and, two, the choice of "hard problems" they
| decided to take on (specifically, SAF & cheap tickets). My hopes
| are that the engines are in development, using SAF instead of
| conventional fuel isn't a big deal if you design for from the
| start, and the $5,000 thing is more about saying how low,
| hypothetically, an airline could price tickets while making
| money. I'd also like to know what the current status of the
| state-of-the-art is in quiet supersonic flight. NASA's quiet
| supersonic demonstrator, the Lockheed Martin X-59 QuSST, combined
| with regulators' desire to decide on supersonic overland travel
| in 2028, would open up new routes like JFK-LAX for planes meeting
| noise requirements, should regulators decide to allow it.
|
| My hypothesis on Boom's design choices? Quiet supersonic cruise
| is still technically challenging and has an uncertain regulatory
| future, and the political tide may be turning towards greater
| regulation on fossil fuels. So, by using SAF, Boom ensures that
| their plan will at least fly in an uncertain regulatory future,
| even if there's no overland flight. And, using what they learned
| developing the Overture, they'll be in a position to develop a
| quiet supersonic transport should regulators give the green
| light.
|
| [1] I'd interpret routes to be something like airport-pairs, as
| in Laguardia-Heathrow would be one route. If you Boom could fly
| from three airports in the US to or from three airports in
| Europe, you'd have nine routes (3*3). This article talks a bit
| about the lack of clarity with Boom's "route" number:
| <https://leehamnews.com/2021/06/04/hotr-500-destinations-for-...>
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| "agreement to purchase up to 20"
|
| So, possibly zero. OK, thanks for the update.
| alphabetting wrote:
| _Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach
| 1.7 over water -- or twice the speed of today's fastest
| commercial aircraft -- with a range of 4,250 nautical miles.
| Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also
| being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as
| little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just
| under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in three hours are
| among the many possibilities._
|
| Probably will be very expensive but it's exciting for future
| possibilities
| dmz73 wrote:
| Melbourne to LA flight is currently 13-16 hours. This plane
| would cut it to around 8 if they could extend the range and it
| would make the flight bearable (I find that first 8 hours are
| OK but anything after that slowly turns to agony). But the
| distance between Melbourne and LA is 6883NM and even Brisbane
| to LA is 6246NM. So, Australia is still out of reach. One could
| do Brisbane to Honolulu at 4088NM and then Honolulu to LA but
| with the layover total time will probably be the same at best
| or much longer. Maybe one day...
| samstave wrote:
| > _Probably will be very expensive but it 's exciting for
| future possibilities_
|
| Are you kidding me! I cant recall the last time I DIDN'T need
| to be in Honolulu in THREE HOURS!! This is a life changer for
| my Macadamia nut Addiction...
|
| ---
|
| In all seriousness, the best commercial prospect for this is
| high-speed-cargo.
|
| Need a part from GuangZhu like TODAY?
|
| Need an organ transplant from Ohio to Munich, TODAY?
|
| Need to fire 900 employees via ZOOM call whilst flying to your
| other mansions to feed your pet slaves, TODAY?
|
| Possibilities are boundless!
| chx wrote:
| > a range of 4,250 nautical miles.
|
| > Need a part from GuangZhu
|
| CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm.
|
| > Ohio to Munich
|
| OK that can work, CLE-MUC is 3,759 nm.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm.
|
| Just add a refueling stop at ANC, the same as most cargo
| flights today (and the same as most passenger flights in
| the past).
|
| According to a Great Circle mapper, CAN-ANC-LAX is only
| about 250 km longer than CAN-LAX.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Descending and climbing again will take a lot of fuel,
| jets are only efficient at high altitude. Plus of course
| the extra takeoff and landing adding cycles to the
| airframe.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Sure, but if it's the difference between "can" and
| "can't"...
|
| It's a small enough issue that it's the routine route for
| cargo flights between China and the U.S. West Coast.
|
| Anchorage is the second-largest cargo airport in the
| United States (after FedEx's home base in Memphis).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Part of that is because cargo usually runs on old and
| inefficient planes, so they really benefit from
| "intermediate stop operations". Carrying all that extra
| fuel for a direct long-haul adds 10-15% in fuel costs.
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| I FUKN LOVE that someone on HN spent the effort to
| determine if my BS was airport-code ready.
|
| God, I fn Love you.
| krallja wrote:
| CLE-MUC also has about 1/3 of the route over land, which
| you'd have to fly subsonic.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ah pffft, those are other people problems. Wealthy people
| want to get around quickly.
|
| What's a few shattered windows and waking up entire
| states with bangs at 3am? They shouldn't have chosen to
| live under a flight path between an organ donor and
| recipient.
| jandrese wrote:
| Maybe fly up Lake Erie and Ontario, then cut across New
| York, New Hampshire, and Vermont? You still end up over
| land for that last part, and you're going to rattle
| windows in Niagara, but it probably cuts half an hour off
| of the trip or so, maybe a little more.
| [deleted]
| awb wrote:
| > over water
|
| All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it
| key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way?
| Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?
| havelhovel wrote:
| A bunch of replies say that wouldn't be allowed, but I heard
| sonic booms regularly while living near an Air Force Base in
| California. It didn't seem to affect the hundreds of
| thousands of residents nearby. Is there an actual reason why
| we can't have one every day at 10am or on some other regular
| schedule?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It really depends on _where_ the sounds were generated, in
| my experience. Off shore sonic booms are loud, but fairly
| tolerable by the time the sound makes it to the beach. But
| I once heard two fighters go supersonic directly overhead
| in eastern Washington (they were pretty high up, even so)
| and the booms sounded like someone tried to bash in the
| front of the house. Not something you 'd tolerate with any
| regularity.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| I imagine because it's a lot harder to successfully sue the
| USAF.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I remember growing up during the cold war in western
| Germany which was formally under the control of the allied
| forces. So they were allowed to go supersonic with the
| military jet aircraft and frequetly did so, even in rather
| populated areas (by German standards - in general, Germany
| is much denser populated than the US). It was a bit
| annoying but definitely survivable (here I still am).
|
| I think it was a mistake for the US to ban supersonic
| flight outright and especially at all altitudes. I can't
| imagine a sonic boom being a huge problem, if you are 10
| miles up or higher.
| jameshart wrote:
| If you heard USAF sonic booms, they were probably over 15
| miles offshore, or 15 miles inside an Air Force training
| range. They were probably not directly over your house.
|
| A crosscountry scheduled supersonic flight will have to
| overfly populated areas twice a day - booming all the way.
|
| (Something that causes a lot of confusion - people often
| think a sonic boom is an instantaneous thing that happens
| when the plane breaks the sound barrier - it is not, it's a
| continuous shockwave that travels with the aircraft while
| it is flying above Mach 1; anyone on the ground who the
| shockwave passes over along the flight path hears a sonic
| boom)
|
| If you've ever heard thunder from lightning 15 miles away
| compared to thunder directly overhead, that might give you
| some framework for figuring out the difference.
| eloff wrote:
| Because of the sonic boom, you can't be flying over inhabited
| areas. Regulations prohibit that.
| [deleted]
| gibolt wrote:
| Supersonic booms are extremely loud. Without solving that
| problem, these can not be flown over populated areas.
| ropiku wrote:
| Due to noise constraints supersonic flight is banned over
| land right now. If they lower noise pollution maybe laws will
| be changed.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I believe supersonic flight is currently banned over the USA
| (and most countries?).
|
| A previous entrtant in this area seemed to suggest that
| efficiency dropped near mach 1, but then rose again to 95% at
| speeds around 1.4 so being able to stay at that speed may
| make it cheaper to run and maximize their USP of speed.
| extrapickles wrote:
| It's currently illegal to fly past Mach 1 over land barring a
| few exceptions (eg: military training areas).
|
| https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight
| jandrese wrote:
| There has been some research in trying to minimize or at
| least spread out sonic booms by changing aircraft shapes and
| engine dynamics, but as far as I know they're all still
| experimental. Boom is going to live up to its name if it ever
| actually flies, which means staying over the water whenever
| they are operating in the supersonic regime.
| hadlock wrote:
| When space shuttle Challenger broke up over Dallas, Texas
| about 20 years ago it came in really low (steep angle of
| attack) and there was a sonic boom, felt like a garbage truck
| had driven into the side of the house at full speed. Woke me
| up from sleep at about 6am. Got out of bed to see what was
| going on, turned on the TV to find out it was the space
| shuttle.
|
| People will tolerate a sonic boom once a quarter or so, but
| you've better have a really good reason, like national
| security.
| danans wrote:
| > When space shuttle Challenger broke up over Dallas, Texas
|
| That was Columbia, not Challenger. Challenger exploded on
| launch from Cape Canaveral.
| theptip wrote:
| Something I didn't know about the sonic boom until
| discussions of this company is that it is continuous, not
| just at the point the plane passes the speed of sound. So a
| plane like this is constantly dragging a cone producing very
| loud noise behind it.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Not only very expensive, but basically coach class all the way
| through, even for the rich people.
| abujazar wrote:
| You mean couch class?
| https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-
| experience...
| cycomanic wrote:
| I recall all the crazy designs that were shown before the
| A380 came out, bars, entertainment areas etc..
| Unsurprisingly airlines instead opted to put more seats in
| (well Singapore did implement those suites with a bed, but
| that was it). These interior concepts never become reality
| because of the economics. They look nice in investor
| brochures and airline magazines though.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Interior will depend on the line.
| gbronner wrote:
| Concorde was not very pleasant to sit in from what I've
| heard. Great food, but the seats were basically economy 2x2.
| wmorein wrote:
| This was something I always heard before I experienced it
| but the truth is it wasn't so bad. You definitely weren't
| sitting in a full First Class seat (which were smaller in
| any case back then) but it was still perfectly comfortable
| especially for the relatively short duration.
|
| And because the overall experience was so cool -- board
| directly from the lounge, the led display showing how fast
| you were going, seeing the curvature of the earth (sorry
| flat earthers), arriving before you left, etc. -- you never
| thought about the seat. I'm sure if you took it all the
| time you might care but most people it was awesome.
| ghaff wrote:
| The Concorde was more or less what domestic
| business/first class is today which is pretty much what
| first class was internationally as well back when the
| Concorde was flying. (Maybe a bit more cramped--more like
| what's being called Premium Economy on an airline like
| United these days.)
| quercusa wrote:
| I've tried the seats at the Intrepid museum. They are very
| tight and the window is tiny. I'm sure the food and drinks
| helped.
|
| https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/The-Intrepid-
| Experience/Exhib...
| ghaff wrote:
| When my dad was flying back and forth to Europe from the
| US East Coast a lot, he told me he got upgraded to the
| Concorde once for some reason. His reaction was that it
| was a neat experience but he'd just as soon fly first
| class in a 747.
| kloch wrote:
| There is a Concorde on display at the Museum of Flight near
| Seattle. You can walk down the aisle but the seats
| themselves are protected by plexiglass.
|
| The seats do look very cramped and the windows are very
| small.
|
| The museum of flight is amazing and much more interactive
| than most air museums.
| mhandley wrote:
| The windows are so small because Concorde cruised at
| 60,000 feet. At that altitude the usual oxygen masks
| won't keep you conscious. The windows are small so that
| if one ever failed, Concorde could descend fast enough to
| an altitude where the masks would work before the
| pressure dropped too low.
| wongarsu wrote:
| When the choice is a two day business trip flying in business
| class or a one day trip in elevated coach class, lots of
| people will choose the option that has them back on the same
| day.
| mikeryan wrote:
| Three hours from SF/LA to Hawaii would have a ton of takers
| at a premium price even at coach class. It makes that trip
| doable for a long weekend.
| arcticbull wrote:
| At just under 5 it already is, I know a few people who do
| it. Hawaii is a bad example because its very much a leisure
| market. They can barely make business class work with
| recliners let alone a Concorde replacement. That's why they
| put their worst business class on the route.
|
| This will end up running LAX-JFK-LHR in my opinion.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Would they be allowed to go supersonic for LAX-JFK?
| krallja wrote:
| No, that route is over land.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Ah yes, I should have said 'I see a potential market for
| faster premium air travel on both the LAX-JFK legs and
| the JFK-LHR legs within the range of the Boom plane' -
| you are of course correct that they would not be able to
| fly LAX-JFK supersonic.
| wbl wrote:
| Between PA and LA there are not a lot of populated areas
| so strearing around them should be possible.
| ISL wrote:
| Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you
| somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class
| that takes twice as long.
| zionic wrote:
| Also sanity. I've done a 16 hour flight before, and let me
| say _never again_. I slept for half of it and the other
| half was still miserable.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, those take at least an additional day to recover
| from.
| MetallicCloud wrote:
| I live in Colorado, but am from Melbourne, Australia. I
| told everyone the last time I went back that it will be
| the last visit. That trip is hellish and once every 2
| years is still too much.
| chx wrote:
| Try adding a break in Honolulu. It is indeed a long
| flight from Los Angeles but I found it's bearable if you
| spend a few days in Honolulu. Also, Jetstar-Melbourne can
| be very cheap in economy or it can be a very good
| price/value in what it calls business which really is
| just premium economy in today's transcontinental flights.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Before the pandemic saved me from ever having to do it
| again, I was traveling from Portland to Hyderabad twice a
| year, and I told my manager that I wouldn't go back
| unless I could stop over in London for a day before
| continuing on to Hyderabad. Never did find out if that
| would have been accepted or not, but I was so tired of
| that particular three-flight nightmare.
| njarboe wrote:
| Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in
| the future.
| upwardbound wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to
| point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for
| spacecraft.
| moomin wrote:
| Try doing 24 hours, with a 9 month old.
|
| It was not fun.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I actually did 30 with a 2 year and a 2 month old. The
| young one is easy actually, they are in a bassinet and
| sleep most of the way. The 2 year old was much more a
| problem. She was just under 2, so didn't have her own
| seat, was obviously getting bored and her sleep rhythm
| was completely different to mine. Still was OK though.
| bluGill wrote:
| I find planes impossible to sleep on. End up arriving
| over tired and stiff and sore after my 16 hour flight.
| I've never got my company to spring for a better class
| though. Next time I'm taking a 1 day layover in Germany
| or something.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That moment when your body really understands that it is
| in fact 1 or 2 in the morning, but you can't sleep on a
| plane. I'd nod off repeatedly, only to instantly wake
| back up again. I'm quite jealous of people who can just
| conk out on a plane, but it does not work for me.
| matwood wrote:
| On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've
| done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+
| hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake
| up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so
| many hours left to go.
|
| It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When
| you think about all the parts that work correctly day in
| and day out to have these longs flights run back and
| forth nearly non-stop.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > On those lengths you start to go a little crazy
|
| 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground
| when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe
| 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop
| caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to
| get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the
| carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce
| up the interior after a really long international flight.
|
| I still remember the first time I flew home from the
| north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to
| Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that
| silly map more than I should have (it just makes things
| slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we
| went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized
| that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we
| were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few
| minutes I could have cried.
| matwood wrote:
| > order seems to break down a bit
|
| Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see
| people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks
| - just anything to pass the time.
| Fomite wrote:
| The Seattle to Dubai flight is rough, but at least it's
| usually on a nice plane.
|
| The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British
| Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all _that_ long a
| flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This
| plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on
| that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage
| came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down
| into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with
| essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain
| that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I don't think I could sleep for 8 hours on a plane
| rhino369 wrote:
| The business class lay flat seats are pretty comfortable.
| I was able to sleep 8-9 hours on them, but was
| interrupted sleep. Better than nothing.
| cjrp wrote:
| It's true, and makes sense where your face-to-face time is
| the key thing. But where it's just "work time", surely you
| can do a good amount of work on a 7 hour flight in a decent
| business class seat with reliable internet? Especially if
| you can also minimise the time wasted on the ground (fast
| security line, lounge with areas to work, airline calling
| your flight when it's almost finished boarding not at the
| start, etc.).
| rtpg wrote:
| There are definitely people who can get work done in a
| flight, but honestly I have a hard time imagining logging
| 7 hours. Maybe if you have a lot of reading to do?
| afavour wrote:
| I do too, but I also don't have a huge amount of
| experience sitting in an incredibly comfortable first
| class seat. I imagine I'd get a lot more done than I do
| in coach.
|
| I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening
| more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a
| 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
| everforward wrote:
| I fly first class a fair bit, and I struggle to get
| anything done on the plane (in the terminal is fine,
| though).
|
| For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I
| can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try
| to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going
| to be on a screen.
|
| It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not
| really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable,
| first class is just kind of neutral; not actively
| comfortable or uncomfortable.
|
| I usually get more done sitting in the terminal than I do
| on the plane itself.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I fly business a few times a year and almost always treat
| it as rest and relaxation. The chance for quiet downtime
| that I won't get on the trip and rarely get at home as
| well. 10 hours of extra sleep, reading, and podcasts. It
| seems like most passengers do the same thing. Trying to
| smash actual work into the flight is miserable.
| ghaff wrote:
| For me, it's a good chance to watch a movie and maybe
| read a book (which I don't do often enough at home). I'm
| may be an outlier but I don't really care if I have
| Internet on a flight or not.
|
| If I have a lie-flat business class option with decent
| food, getting to my destination a few hours early with
| less comfortable seating isn't a clear win. Like most
| people, I'm not jetting over to London to have lunch and
| sign a deal and heading home to sleep in my own bed.
| username223 wrote:
| > Like most people, I'm not jetting over to London to
| have lunch and sign a deal and heading home to sleep in
| my own bed.
|
| Thank you for enlightening me. As someone nowhere near
| rich enough for this to be relevant, my upper bound for
| pleasant W-E transatlantic flight is being able to sleep.
| Shortening that sleep seems like a loss. But if you have
| a private jet on call, you can skip connecting flights,
| airport security, schedules, and all the things that
| actually make flying slow and miserable. I guess this
| company is aiming at the people who don't quite have that
| kind of money.
| ghaff wrote:
| There is, in general, a very big gap between private and
| cost-doesn't-matter commercial. And, no, I can't speak to
| what flying private is like.
|
| Flying _can_ still be a hassle flying business /first
| mostly because of cancellations/schedule changes--which
| can still happen otherwise because of weather, air
| traffic, etc.--but is less frequent I assume. A lot of
| the hassles of commercial flight (security lines, lack of
| overhead space, airport crowds in the waiting area,
| cramped seating, etc.) can be mitigated to a significant
| degree however.
| prvit wrote:
| Depends on the airline, lots of planes have bars you can
| walk to.
| cjrp wrote:
| I'm the same, but I'm imagining the "super serious
| business people" who are presumably the target market for
| these planes (given the price). Is it worth the premium
| to get them from London to NYC in 4 hours, when they
| could do 5 hours of billable work in the lounge/on the
| plane anyway.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depends on how well you can sleep I guess. US to Europe
| is almost entirely overnight flights.
|
| Not so much the other way though.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Airplane wifi is garbage and wildly unreliable.
| cjrp wrote:
| Getting better in my experience, last flight I had about
| 1-2Mbps which was plenty for browsing and sending
| messages/emails. If that's all you require to do work,
| then it's fine.
| ksec wrote:
| Makes me wonder if BOOM will ever enter the private jet
| market.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Maybe that will be their go-to market once they realize
| tgat airline business is actually incredibly hard.
| mshook wrote:
| Still, flying westbound fast makes tons of sense as you can
| arrive "before" you took off (local time) and thus you get
| a whole day in front of you.
|
| But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just
| trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound
| won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and
| flying during the day, you'll land at night...
| FredPret wrote:
| It always makes a lot of sense - time saved is time
| saved.
|
| Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in
| bed on time.
| theYipster wrote:
| No it doesn't. You are forgetting timezones.
|
| The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal
| for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only
| be used at speed over the ocean.
|
| A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at
| 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time
| zone change.
|
| It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a
| traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the
| flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge
| forth with the day.
|
| My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made
| supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| As somebody who flew quite a few lie-flat business
| flights on JFK->LON - you absolutely do not get good
| night sleep. Flight time is 7:30 and you can
| realistically go to sleep 30 minutes after take off (when
| they start serving food and other passengers are still
| noisy - good luck falling asleep quickly) and you are
| generally woken up about 1-1.5 hour before landing (Why?
| I have no idea but they turn on the lights, serve
| breakfast and do announcements about weather in London
| about that time before landing). So you get at most 5.5h
| of mediocre quality sleep which is better than nothing
| but not enough to function 100%.
|
| 3 hour flight will change a lot of things for JFK-LON
| business trips as they open up opportunities to loose
| only 1 full day during business trip instead of loosing
| two full days. I generally stay on NYC time with meetings
| in the afternoon LON time if trip is less than 5 days so
| short flight is game changer.
| FredPret wrote:
| If I'm a jetlagged businessman in NYC, operating on
| internal London time, and I'm finishing my work day at
| 6PM local time/11PM internal time, I want to get home and
| wake up with my family ASAP rather than try and sleep on
| a plane.
|
| Thank goodness for Zoom
| ghaff wrote:
| That's true mostly of "rich people" who are also highly
| scheduled executives. Otherwise there are a lot of
| tradeoffs involving comfort, time, schedule, and so forth.
| cannaceo wrote:
| As someone who flies first class there is no way I'm flying
| coach to save time. Flying business is about the lounges,
| the meals, the service, and the ability to stretch out your
| legs.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| If you value that over speed, why not take a oceanic
| cruiser? More lounges, more service, you can stretch your
| legs way more (or take a swim), better meals (and more of
| them)..
|
| Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner
| left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK
| and the US east coast.
| indecisive_user wrote:
| There's only one left because there is no demand for that
| kind of travel, which is good evidence that people value
| time over comfort.
| notahacker wrote:
| Still, that solitary transatlantic liner carries more
| people across the Atlantic in a typical week than
| Concorde did when it operated scheduled services on that
| route, and not because the other Concordes were busy
| elsewhere...
|
| In any case, the lack of senior business executives
| choosing seven day trips in plush private cabins as their
| preferred mode of transatlantic crossing isn't much of an
| indication of whether people in that price bracket will
| tend to prefer pay more to spend four hours in discomfort
| rather than eight hours mostly asleep.
| maxwell wrote:
| There's certainly demand for low-cost ocean voyages as
| vacations, with over 300 cruise ships in service (and
| cruise lines generally quite profitable).
|
| It's high-cost, non-vacation, long distance
| travel/transport where ocean liners were beaten in the
| 1960s by airliners (and airlines, in contrast, are
| generally not very profitable).
| maxwell wrote:
| She's the only one in service right now, but looks to
| also currently depart from Australia, the Emirates,
| France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Africa.
| ghaff wrote:
| The Queen Mary 2 (at least pre-pandemic) did a
| combination of transatlantic liner routes and cruises
| depending upon the time of the year.
| cannaceo wrote:
| It's not as much of a tradeoff as you think. I've been on
| cruises and would rather be first class on Emirates or
| Qatar Airways than on a cruise.
| moomin wrote:
| As someone who flies coach everywhere, I'd do the same if
| I had the means to do so. A long flight in coach is
| extremely draining even if you're time-focussed, you've
| got to take recovery time into consideration.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > coach class all the way
|
| Has there been a render of the interior or something?
| darrenf wrote:
| There is on the Boom site, and it certainly doesn't look
| like regular cattle class
|
| https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-
| experience...
| jameshart wrote:
| Yes and pre-launch renderings of the interior of the
| Dreamliner featured a piano bar and all-round led screen
| walls.
|
| Interior buildout in planes is always at the discretion
| of the airline, and the concepts shown by manufacturers
| should not be taken as realistic.
| chx wrote:
| I can't see how that seat could possibly transform to lie
| flat and it's a dud if they try to get people to pay big
| money for non-lie flat seats.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I guess the idea is that the trip is such a short hop
| that you don't need to lie flat. For example train seats
| in first in the UK aren't lie flat either, because
| they're only ever a few hours at most.
| mh- wrote:
| I'm not sure lie-flat is a must if the flights are so
| much shorter. I'd rather have a comfortable seat for
| working if we're only talking about a 3 hour flight.
| Elora wrote:
| The luxury is saving time.
| cma wrote:
| How are they doing this with sustainable energy?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/sustainable-
| avi...
|
| I wonder if designing for synthetic fuels gives them any
| benefits? They can be a little bit purer.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| stupid lip service
| replygirl wrote:
| biofuels or synthetics. not sure if they plan to own the fuel
| supply chain, so "net zero" may come through offsets to cover
| the impact of producing the fuels
| tgv wrote:
| Biofuels is ecological fraud. It is not sustainable. And is
| there a synthetic fuel plant with zero impact at any scale
| already? No, this is just wasting more fuel for the heck of
| it.
| replygirl wrote:
| > is there a synthetic fuel plant with zero impact at any
| scale already? No, this is just wasting more fuel for the
| heck of it
|
| cool, so you're on board with nuclear + hydro as a more
| sustainable base load solution than lithium-based
| batteries
| tgv wrote:
| Lithium based batteries don't produce power.
| alex_young wrote:
| Did replygirl say they did? To my reading they are
| talking about using batteries to store and deliver
| baseline energy from intermittent sources like wind and
| solar.
| replygirl wrote:
| this
| panick21_ wrote:
| I would love a future where we are making everything
| nuclear, including synthetic fuel. However this is
| nowhere near reality. You need high temperature reactor
| to make this viable.
| phire wrote:
| Are you saying that sustainable synthetic fuels can't
| exist? Or don't current exist? Because those are two very
| different statements.
| tgv wrote:
| Well, it requires a lot of power, so building a large
| plant will be difficult and expensive.
| danans wrote:
| > building a large plant will be difficult and expensive.
|
| Utility scale renewables are in pennies pwr kWh in
| Levelized Cost, and continually dropping.
|
| There are 10kWh/liter of jet fuel. Utility scale solar is
| 3c/kWh LCOE today.
|
| Assuming a pessimistic 10% efficiency in electricity to
| synthetic jet fuel conversion via H2 hydrolysis and the
| Fischer Tropsch process, that's a hypothetical $3/liter
| of synthetic jet fuel.
|
| Current petroleum based jet fuel is $1.50/liter.
|
| If you improve the conversion efficiency to 20% and lower
| the LCOE of utility scale solar to 1c/kWh (projected by
| 2050), and the hypothetical liter of synthetic jet fuel
| drops to 50c/liter, all while petroleum jet-fuel grows
| increasingly scarce and more expensive.
|
| The efficiency of synfuel production could rise
| significantly as the efficiency of feedstocks like H2
| hydrolysis (already 50%+) increase, and if if CO for
| Fischer Tropsch can be sourced from biomass instead of
| sourcing it from atmospheric CO2.
|
| Finally, it's likely that in the future we'll switch to
| using hydrogen directly as an aviation fuel, bypassing
| hydrocarbons altogether, at which point the electricity
| to air conversion efficiency nears 80%.
|
| At those prices, you can begin to afford to overbuild
| renewable capacity to drive a synfuel pipeline to store
| that energy chemically, which we will arguably need to do
| for seasonal energy storage anyways.
| bluGill wrote:
| Both of those statements are false: synthetic fuels exist
| now. Last I checked you could buy synthetic fuel for
| about 2-3 times what regular fuel of the same types cost.
| Germany was doing synthetic fuels in WWII. South Africa
| did them when under embargo for their racist policies.
| Now they are mostly used by racers - where allowed they
| are enough better to make a win against regular fuel
| (assuming great drivers and well tuned cars).
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| The statement was _sustainable_ synthetic fuels.
| Synthesizing from other fossil fuels like coal or natural
| gas definitely doesn 't qualify.
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe, but all you really need is a source of CO for the
| process to work. Coal or natural gas are easy sources,
| but with some energy input we can make it from CO2,
| Photosynthesis is the most obvious way.
|
| Sustainable really depends on how much we need. There is
| probably enough wind energy for the process, so long as
| we only use it for things where high energy density is
| needed. That means drive an EV car or electrified
| transit, but we can use synthetic fuel for airplanes.
| Maybe, this last is mostly my guess, it is a real problem
| to work on.
| cma wrote:
| I can imagine the deserts eventually covered in glass
| tubes to grow algae for fuel and be sustainable if they
| can figure out a sustainable nutrients part.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They appear to have signed a deal with YCombinator startup
| Prometheous Fuels to supply the SAF fuel, with carbon
| offsets to cover other carbon costs.
|
| https://www.prometheusfuels.com/
|
| (very cool website, not sure if thats a good or a bad
| thing)
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| solardev wrote:
| > (very cool website, not sure if thats a good or a bad
| thing)
|
| Maybe I'm just old-school, but this was sooooo annoying.
| It'd be a cool intro to a Telltale game or something, but
| having it take over all the navigation (scrolling barely
| works, getting to the point takes forever) to tell its
| fancy 3d story was just a waste of my time, IMO. I want
| to know how their fuels work, not that they can hire
| someone to make a 3D game intro inside their browser.
| Just unnecessary shiny that gets in the way of usability
| :(
| replygirl wrote:
| carbon capture to fuels is pretty cool! wonder how much
| of the capture will run off gas or battery :|
| [deleted]
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Can someone do the math on how much sustainable energy we
| would be wasting so people could get somewhere faster than a
| normal plane?
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Wind resistance is supra linear naturally, but its also a
| more aerodynamic plane than a normal one, but also carries
| less passengers.
|
| Its prolly something like 5x-10x worse.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Good Lord.
| replygirl wrote:
| it's all turboprops and no afterburner. so, expensive, but much
| more affordable than concorde, maybe to the point of competing
| with subsonic first class
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| When I saw "all turboprop and no afterburner" I imagined some
| new flavor of "all cat, no cattle".
| replygirl wrote:
| i hate when cowboys wear the cat but don't actually work
| with cattle
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| Ok I'm assuming the parent was a typo (???). And the
| original is "all hat, no cattle" I guess, but I feel like
| I've heard the saying "all hat, no cat", is that a thing?
| Because there was a cat in a hat, and it rhymes, so it
| basically still works as a saying.
| cjrp wrote:
| Turbofan (what's on most commercial jet aircraft), not
| turboprop (jet engine driving a propeller, generally on
| smaller commercial and some private aircraft).
| samstave wrote:
| r/noStupidQuestions ;
|
| Can these be 'stacked' - Can you have a turboFan in line
| with a turboProp such that the output of the wash of the
| Fan feeds into the Prop, but with a portion of the wash
| spinning to thrust on the outer ring of output.=, via a
| design in the cowlings which is hyper directed thrust vents
| (think the grid of straws used to funnel water into a
| cohesive column, which can be directed)
|
| Imagine a small diameter turboprop behind a much larger
| turbofan
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Why would you do that though, instead of just running a
| multi-stage turbofan such as they used on the F-100
| engine (F15 and F16).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| "can" vs "can come up with an implementation that
| provides any performance benefits in any set of real
| world circumstances"
|
| You could. But there's no way the efficiency and
| complexity penalty having props feeding fans or fans
| feeding props comes out ahead of "pick one and make it
| bigger"
| jseutter wrote:
| As far as has ever been discovered - no, this won't work.
| You can think of a fan as just a prop enclosed in a
| housing (jet engine). A prop loses effectiveness at the
| speed of sound because the air passing the prop gets a
| high pressure shock wave that effectively makes the prop
| not prop-shaped, so it can't move air. Picture it as
| using a hammer on glass instead of pushing on glass with
| your hand, one works way better than the other for
| generating thrust. The only way (so far) to have an
| effective prop is to have the prop tips move slower than
| the speed of sound. Engine designers worked around this
| by slowing the air down around the prop. To do this, they
| moved it inside a tube. They slowed the air down so that
| the prop (fan) can travel more slowly, and then they heat
| the air behind the prop to gain excess pressure and
| thrust. And this is exactly what a mach 1+ jet engine
| does. The opening at the front of the engine forces air
| in, and the design of the inlet slows the air down so it
| is subsonic, along with a corresponding increase in
| pressure. Some fans (props) which are now effective
| because they spin at subsonic speeds compress it more, so
| more air can enter the engine. Then they burn fuel to
| heat up the air, increasing the pressure. After that they
| have a few more fans that run in reverse to drive the
| fans at the front of the engine, and finally exhaust this
| hotter, bigger, more high pressure air out the back of
| the engine to produce thrust.
|
| So hopefully you see how your question is an interesting
| one, and one that has already been sorta done. Turbofans
| and turboprops are really quite similar, but at mach
| speeds only the turbofans have the right environment to
| be able to work efficiently. Your idea would have the
| prop in a supersonic air stream, which would make it
| effectively useless.
| samstave wrote:
| > _a high pressure shock wave that effectively makes the
| prop not prop-shaped, so it can 't move air._
|
| Leading micro eddys can solve this.
|
| If the induction is a straight stream, it will fail - you
| need to direct micro eddys
|
| If you do this with mechanical means (deflection
| cowlings) you will hit a limit.
|
| The ideal design is in the funneling of eddys as they
| traverse in a super spiral between the front eddy and as
| it spirals to the thrust vector.
|
| however, pre-ionizaton, and then magnetic ion direction
| can swirl the eddy to the desired output. However, AIR is
| not the thrust component at this time, its ionized energy
| which is being "thrust" (thrust is typically thought of
| as a 'push' - but this is actually a 'pull'
|
| Identify a spot, pull yourself to it. As opp
| ahh wrote:
| What about the Tu-95? It's famously loud due to (says
| Wikipedia) supersonic propeller tips. Do you know why
| they're still effective?
| samstave wrote:
| I am convinced that if you were to dimple the propeller
| (tips) such as a golf ball is pitted, you would reduce
| this effect.
|
| Further, if you wer to dimple/convex in an alternating
| pattern the leading edge of any aero ... efficiencies
| would increase.
|
| Micro-dimples are better.
|
| Understand the eddys, as Da vinci would say....
| adolph wrote:
| The Tu-95's props are paired for counter-rotational
| torque balance. The second prop does not add additional
| thrust.
| ahh wrote:
| The supersonic speed was the question, not the
| contrarotation.
| adolph wrote:
| Well, samstave's original question was one of adding
| power with an inline stack. As I understood it, that
| isn't the purpose for he Tu-95's pair of props since they
| share a power source. The below explanation [0] has some
| interesting analysis based on Russian language
| documentation about how torque is divided between the
| prop pairs. Additionally the paper linked from the
| Wikipedia contra-rotating prop page "Analysis of a
| contra-rotating propeller driven transport aircraft" [1]
| has a great section on fuel savings, which probably has
| contributed to the Tu-95's success.
|
| _Thus, the front prop gets almost 20% more torque than
| the rear prop._
|
| 0.
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/74787/why-
| dont-...
|
| 1. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt.php?attachment
| id=281...
| samstave wrote:
| Thank you all TIL so much.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I believe they're sacrificing efficiency for performance.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Technically yes but it would make performance worse.
| Props are efficient because of their large size, which
| allows them to push a lot of air, if you shrink it then
| you give up that advantage. If you had extra power left
| over to turn a prop, you'd want to use it to turn a
| bigger fan, or just leave that power in the exhaust.
| adolph wrote:
| Edit: removed battery voltage analogy.
|
| You might be interested in reading this stack overflow
| answer about differences between turbo prop, jet, and
| fan.
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71301/what-
| is-t...
|
| Another aspect to consider is changing engine
| characteristics for different conditions. An example is
| changing the structures guiding air into the engine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intake_ramp
| samstave wrote:
| This is why we CAN have nice things.
|
| If everyone were to take their response as if they were
| educating a youngling, to grow with an understanding, the
| world would be a better place.
| replygirl wrote:
| ah, neat! looks like they recently switched from 3x
| turboprop to 4x turbofan
|
| edit: had to correlate sources to find that a bunch of
| popular aviation blogs got the original design wrong. was
| actually 3x turbofan -> 4x turbofan
| replygirl wrote:
| why the downvotes? the original design was trying to use
| 3x turboprops, and i can see articles on google about
| them switching to 4x turbofans after the xb-1 work
|
| edit: see parent edit, i was wrong. you guys are pretty
| good at making someone with misinfo feel bad though
| tantalor wrote:
| Share the links?
| capekwasright wrote:
| The original design was meant to use 3x turbojets, not
| turboprops.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Replying since I can't edit my other post. I didn't
| downvote you, I just let you know that you were very
| likely wrong and that may have been the source of
| downvotes. I presumed it was a statement made in good
| faith and was going to be corrected in short order and it
| has.
|
| It's the original source of the mistake that should feel
| bad as they're supposed to be experts in the field.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| You have to be mixed up; a turboprop has a propeller
| attached to the jet engine. No-one in their right mind
| would use a turboprop supersonically. It would make an
| insane amount of noise.
| adolph wrote:
| Define "right mind"
|
| _The Republic XF-84H "Thunderscreech" was an American
| experimental turboprop aircraft derived from the F-84F
| Thunderstreak. Powered by a turbine engine that was mated
| to a supersonic propeller, the XF-84H had the potential
| of setting the unofficial air speed record for propeller-
| driven aircraft, but was unable to overcome aerodynamic
| deficiencies and engine reliability problems, resulting
| in the program's cancellation._
|
| [. . .]
|
| _Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic
| speeds, the outer 24-30 inches (61-76 cm) of the blades
| on the XF-84H 's propeller traveled faster than the speed
| of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous
| visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the
| propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was
| actually powerful enough to knock a man down; an
| unfortunate crew chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was
| severely incapacitated during a 30-minute ground run.
| Coupled with the already considerable noise from the
| subsonic aspect of the propeller and the T40's dual
| turbine sections, the aircraft was notorious for inducing
| severe nausea and headaches among ground crews. In one
| report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after
| close range exposure to the shock waves emanating from a
| powered-up XF-84H._
|
| The XF-84H design top speed was Mach .9 and probably made
| it to .7 in testing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thundersc
| ree...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _a turboprop has a propeller attached to the jet
| engine._
|
| Since this is the pedant thread I feel obliged to point
| out that turboprops are propellers attached to gas
| turbine engines, not jet engines. Jet engines are gas
| turbine engines that produce thrust using a _jet_ of hot
| exhaust gas out the back. Gas turbine engines that don 't
| produce thrust using a jet of exhaust gas aren't jet
| engines; examples are turboprop engines and turboshaft
| engines (popular in helicopters, some tanks, etc.)
| Turbofan engines produce at least some of their thrust
| with an exhaust jet, so it's fair enough to call those
| jet engines. Probably the truest sort of jet engines are
| turbojet engines, which are no longer used for commercial
| aviation and only have some niche applications remaining
| (for instance cruise missiles.)
|
| Then there are the "jet engines" which aren't gas
| turbines at all; jetskis use gasoline powered piston
| engines to produce thrust using a _jet_ of water. And
| rockets, which don 't breath air, could be called jet
| engines _in a sense_ because they produce thrust using a
| jet of exhaust gas. But if you go around calling rocket
| engines "jet engines" you're going to get a lot of
| people correcting you by pointing out that rocket engines
| don't breath air. Many rocket engines do contain gas
| turbines though, using gas turbines to power propellant
| pumps, e.g. turbopumps...
|
| And if we really want to get into the weeds, some piston
| powered aircraft get a _small_ amount of thrust from
| their exhaust too. And some exploit the "Meredith
| effect", wherein air over the radiators gets heated and
| produces a small amount of thrust. These effects may
| contribute a few percentage points of the total thrust of
| the plane, and in truth, some turboprop configurations do
| this too. But >90% of the thrust is coming from the
| propeller, not the exhaust.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| That is true, I was restricting my vocabulary to avoid
| adding additional concepts.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The XB-1 used 3 turbojet engines.
| replygirl wrote:
| i didn't say anything about xb-1's propulsion
| sokoloff wrote:
| I acknowledge that; I was trying to bridge from the
| things you did say to facts about the Boom aircraft
| development.
| [deleted]
| rkangel wrote:
| I think the logical explanation is that there was a
| mistake in the original article. A propeller is not the
| right choice for supersonic flight, I don't want to say
| impossible but it wouldn't be far off. They've gone from
| 3 jet engines to 4, and in both cases they would be
| turbofans.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The XF-88B Turboprop hit Mach 0.9 in level flight, but it
| was using an afterburner, which is rather cheating.
| Supposedly it could go supersonic in dives.
| replygirl wrote:
| acknowledged in edit
| stuff4ben wrote:
| it was never a turbo prop. You'll never get a propeller
| driven aircraft to supersonic speeds.
| robotnikman wrote:
| And if you try you end up with monstrosities like the
| XF-84 Thunderscreech
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscre
| ech
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| Even if your aircraft doesn't come close to the speed of
| sound, the tips of the propellers will, leading to insane
| amounts of noise. The Russians, as they are prone to do,
| didn't care and did it anyways.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A max speed of 575 mph is quite impressive for a prop
| plane; hasn't ever been recognized by FAI though...
| jefftk wrote:
| "Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds,
| the outer 24-30 inches (61-76 cm) of the blades on the
| XF-84H's propeller traveled faster than the speed of
| sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous visible
| sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers
| for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was actually
| powerful enough to knock a man down; an unfortunate crew
| chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was severely
| incapacitated during a 30-minute ground run. Coupled with
| the already considerable noise from the subsonic aspect
| of the propeller and the T40's dual turbine sections, the
| aircraft was notorious for inducing severe nausea and
| headaches among ground crews. In one report, a Republic
| engineer suffered a seizure after close range exposure to
| the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H."
| ominous_prime wrote:
| Not sure what you were thinking of, but they were never
| planning on a turboprop since that's not really possible.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since we talk about a start up selling power points to
| VCs, why not use tirbo _props_? Same as having typos in
| Nigerian oil prince inheritence mails to weed out the
| targets, sorry investors, that might think too much?
| steve_taylor wrote:
| I find it incredibly hard to believe that turboprop was
| ever on the table.
| tedivm wrote:
| Everyone claiming you are wrong hasn't bothered to
| google. Literally the first response for "overture
| turboprop" is a series of articles confirming what you
| said.
|
| > The Overture supersonic aircraft will be powered by
| three turboprop engines, which includes two that will be
| mounted under each wing, while the third engine will be
| fitted at the end of the fuselage.
|
| https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/overture-
| super...
| cortesoft wrote:
| There is no way you could go supersonic with a turboprop
| LegitShady wrote:
| if your next stop is tbe pavement and its a one time use
| aircraft...
| projektfu wrote:
| Just the tip...
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| You can, it's just so loud it becomes health risk to even
| share a runway with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rep
| ublic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech
| m4rtink wrote:
| Maybe in a steep dive ? ;-)
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, it'd be impressively noisy, anyway.
| ominous_prime wrote:
| It really must be a simple typo, it's inaccurate to the
| point of being nonsensical.
| nemetroid wrote:
| It's like claiming an upcoming Tesla model will use Ni-Cd
| batteries. No matter how many blogs claim it, it's
| clearly wrong.
| replygirl wrote:
| they're right after all--many blogs got it wrong. maybe
| boom's PR screwed up
| nikhizzle wrote:
| Interesting that this is slower that the Concord which cruised
| at Mach 2. I wonder if a slightly lower speed makes the
| economics more sustainable.
| gruturo wrote:
| If this is achieved without afterburners (as I understand it
| is), then yes, this is an immense difference in fuel
| consumption and radically impacts the economics.
| willyt wrote:
| Concorde only used afterburner(en_us)/reheat(en_uk) for a
| small part of the acceleration phase of the flight not for
| cruise.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| So afterburner then. 'Merica.
| phire wrote:
| It used afterburners for takeoff and accelerating through
| Mach 1.
| mshook wrote:
| Well past Mach 1 actually, reheat was cut off at Mach
| 1.7.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| It's en_gb and not en_uk (although UK is exceptionally
| reserved [1], and we recently begun using UK on car
| nationality identifier stickers).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exce
| ptional...
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| GB is the more neutral term, UK is pushed by the
| Conservatives and nationalists/royalists
| jinder wrote:
| GB is not more neutral - it excludes Northern Ireland,
| which is a part of the UK.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It doesn't seem very neutral to go around demanding
| others call you _great_.
|
| Yes I know.. that's not how the word is meant in this
| context...
| jfk13 wrote:
| Aside from any such associations, they mean different
| things.
|
| People often use the terms imprecisely, but (for example)
| if Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, it'd still
| be part of the island of Great Britain.
| etothepii wrote:
| GB is not "more neutral".
|
| Great Britain is the name of the post 1707 Union of
| England and Scotland. It's not neutral if you are a
| member of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland.
|
| The United Kingdom is the name used by the country at the
| UN but is, of course, not neutral if one is a member of
| the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
|
| No one uses .co.gb domains.
| mlyle wrote:
| Here .... en-ie and en-gb are different things, because
| the Irish English dialect is a bit more distant from
| British English than the Scottish one. Whereas .uk is a
| country code representing a specific political entity.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Note that Concorde "B" was meant to use a variant of the
| Olympus 593 without reheat, but ultimately lack of sales
| of the original aircraft doomed it.
| closewith wrote:
| Afterburner is a common term in both countries. Reheat is
| and always was a semi-official slang used in the UK and
| is a reference to the similarity in concept to reheat
| steam turbine.
| phire wrote:
| Boom were previously targeted a cruising speed of Mach 2.2, I
| wonder why they lowered it to Mach 1.7 with the latest design
| update.
|
| Might be related selecting an engine. The previous version of
| the design had a fantasy engine that didn't exist (I think
| the specs came from a military engine that they couldn't use
| due to export restrictions), but now they are working with
| Rolls-Royce, and appear to have actually selected an engine
| design. It must be smaller than what they originally wanted,
| because they moved from a 3 engine design to a 4 engine
| design.
| baby wrote:
| Export restrictions are not just messing cryptography!
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| But helping mute the airforces of Russia and China
| twic wrote:
| Maybe military engine control systems work by sending
| PGP-encrypted emails to the fuel valves?
| galgot wrote:
| Supersonic heat also. Concorde was in Aluminum and at 2.1
| mach it was at the very limit of what could be done in
| aluminum. Which required a very "tight" design, engineering
| marvel in fact. Go faster and one have to go for titanium,
| which is much more difficult to work with and manufacture.
| lettergram wrote:
| To me that sounds like a fuel saving option. Might extend
| the routes.
| chx wrote:
| This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these
| will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an
| airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see
| everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my
| imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours,
| you are just not saving enough time for the surely astronomical
| cost.
|
| You'd need a much longer range for this to be a real win. If
| you double that range then you can do JFK-SIN or PTY-SYD and
| then you could do an LHR-PTY-SYD flight in ~12 hours which
| would be a massive win.
| MAGZine wrote:
| a "reasonably" priced helicopter service already exists in
| nyc, I don't see why this would be so crazy.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Boom Supersonic is targeting current business class seat
| costs per mile. So it's not Concorde level crazy.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You can target any price you want, if you achieve it is a
| different story. All eVTOL companies arw targeting prices
| below taxi rates and have yet to proof thatvthey can
| actually do it.
| staticassertion wrote:
| > This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these
| will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an
| airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see
| everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my
| imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours,
| you are just not saving enough time for the surely
| astronomical cost.
|
| This is true for getting to JFK from Manhattan, which is 40
| minutes with 0 traffic and then the airport is absolutely
| massive and has long lines, but Boston -> Logan or SF to SFO
| is minutes. I think my total time from my door to my gate is
| ~30-40 minutes when I fly SFO.
| fastball wrote:
| I think Boom's entire business plan is that they can do
| supersonic passenger jets for _not_ astronomical cost. It 's
| not like they're unaware of the Concorde.
| Justin_K wrote:
| You are arguing with a straw man. Nobody said driving to the
| airport will change. The claim is for the price of business
| class, get there in half the time.
| chx wrote:
| What I am saying is that you can only save so much on the
| flight time over such a short range when the overall trip
| has fixed time segments. If we were looking at shaving off
| seven hours of a 20-21 hour London-Sydney trip then yeah,
| that's massive even if the flight itself is merely 19 hours
| of that.
| jefftk wrote:
| In other words, running into Amdahl's Law [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
| wongarsu wrote:
| Shaving off enough hours to be able to board a plane in the
| early morning, have a two hour business meeting in the
| destination and fly back and arrive home in the late evening
| of the same day is a huge draw to some.
| mshook wrote:
| Except it doesn't really work. It could almost work flying
| west then east to get home but regular Concorde flights
| couldn't give you the option to fly back the same day.
|
| BA001 LHR 10:30AM -> JFK 09:25AM
|
| BA002 JFK 08:30AM -> LHR 05:15PM
|
| AF002 CDG 10:30AM -> JFK 08:15AM
|
| AF001 JFK 08:00AM -> CDG 05:45PM
|
| That's why flying westbound supersonic is less of an
| advantage. Because as you can see, flying west, your day is
| still wasted, even if you leave early.
| cjrp wrote:
| Seems doable if the schedule was tweaked though? LHR
| 9:30AM - JFK 8:25AM, JFK 1:30PM - LHR 10:15PM
| mshook wrote:
| You're right but I'm sure both companies had good reasons
| for their schedules (for instance noise restrictions at
| night).
|
| And realistically, from your plane at JFK to Manhattan,
| that's got to be a least an hour and a half (immigration
| and cab/limo). And assuming you'd have to be at JFK just
| an hour before your flight (and for an international
| flight that's ballsy), plus with transportation still
| taking an hour, you just wasted 3.5 hours commuting forth
| and back to the airport.
|
| That schedule wouldn't work unless you flew to Manhattan.
| And even then, it'd be tight.
| yardstick wrote:
| I expect operators would arrange dedicated/express
| facilities for all the airport stuff to speed up the
| experience. Dedicated/priority check-in, security,
| immigration. What would be the icing on the cake is an
| express train from the airport to the city centre that
| runs every 10-20 minutes (for all passengers prepared to
| pay, not just supersonics).
| cjrp wrote:
| That train is the Heathrow Express, just need the JFK
| equivalent and you're sorted!
| freeone3000 wrote:
| That would be the Long Island Rail Road (at 35 minutes).
| (It's also connected by subway, which will take 60
| minutes to Manhattan but maybe worthwhile if you want to
| get off sooner.)
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Just use Blade helicopter service - 10 min to Manhattan
| starting at $200+ so affordable to whoever can afford
| business class. Still tight for one day meeting but if
| LHR flight was at 8:00AM and flying back a bit later at
| 2PM NY time it's possible.
| ghaff wrote:
| First class into JFK on Pan Am used to at least have an
| option to fly into NYC by helicopter. Originally this was to
| the Pan Am building in midtown was switched to the midtown
| heliport after an accident.
| onychomys wrote:
| > American has paid a non-refundable deposit on the initial 20
| aircraft.
|
| Pretty glad I don't own American stock right now, because they're
| apparently led by madmen.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's phrased in such a way to give the idea that they've made a
| significant commitment, but it's entirely possible it was
| something like a 1% down payment.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is almost certainly how it was done - and even the
| "fully refundable" deposits airlines make with Boeing, et al
| are going to have "fixed non-refundable costs" even just to
| handle the paperwork.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right. If you're going to place a deposit for aircraft with
| a startup airplane manufacturer, "refundable" only makes
| sense if you're willing to take warrants or something that
| will grant you IP when the company folds. If Boom doesn't
| deliver the aircraft, the company folds and goes bankrupt,
| it's not like the deposit funds are just held in escrow.
| Might as well make it "nonrefundable" to get the PR value.
| 1024core wrote:
| The free publicity alone will pay for that.
| [deleted]
| bragr wrote:
| >American has paid a non-refundable deposit on the initial 20
| aircraft.
|
| I guess that's not nothing given how these sorts of contracts
| usually give the big name brand company lots of outs if the
| speculative company goes bust, but by bragging about it without
| specifying the amount, I'm guessing it's a low amount.
| flybrand wrote:
| Companies love low cost R&D that doubles as low cost marketing!
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Also I'm assuming it is hard to do this kind of project
| internally because it seems so cool. A lot of employees would
| be upset if they were not allowed to take part.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not that American _Airlines_ ever was in the business of
| developing or building aircraft in the first place.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I will say that I've seen plenty of "non-refundable" contracts
| in this industry (see Qatar's ongoing tiff with Airbus over
| coating peeling issues) result in either side unilaterally
| cancelling delivery of airframes. It would really come down to
| what exactly went wrong whether or not AA could truly couldn't
| claw that deposit back.
| hermitdev wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's nonrefundable from the stance of AA
| can't just change its mind and get its money back. If
| Overture fails to deliver on certain metrics, I'd be willing
| to bet AA has a refundable out.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Exactly - but my guess is that plenty of those metrics are
| assessed before delivery, such as type certification.
| pdx_flyer wrote:
| Let us not forget that American is $36B in debt after a huge
| amount of borrowing to get it through COVID.
| leecarraher wrote:
| is the contract public? i would like to see what contingency is
| in place if Boom fails to deliver. Or more to the point, is this
| more PR to make AA appear to be forward looking, and bolster
| Boom's reputation with a deal that will never come to fruition.
| It's a win-win for investors
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